


all be healed (and i'll be whole)

by sybil



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Dutch Is A Mentor Y'all, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Murder, Physical Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Redemption, Religious Cults, Religious Horror, Sexual Abuse, Slow Burn, What-If, When Your Co-Workers Are Your Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2019-06-30 20:04:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 43,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15758730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sybil/pseuds/sybil
Summary: A young woman has been found on the shores of Wishbone Lake and while Whitehorse is convalescing his deputies pick up the slack and begin to investigate with the help of some of the locals. As per usual Hope County has a roiling nest of snakes at its core and Dep's about to give it a good jab with a big stick.[ Alternate Universe/Timeline. In which Jacob never reunites with his brothers in Georgia and winds up in Hope County before the rest of his siblings arrive. Rachel Jessop is not yet Faith Seed. Set four years before the events in the game. Inspired by Taylor Sheridan’s Wind River and my own selfish desire to attempt to contribute to a fandom I’m still relatively new to. ]





	1. hardscrabble elegy

Winter is bearing down on Hope County with a vengeance.

The storm descends, howling across the mountain slopes, clouds like the angry fists of God clenched and ready to pummel the denizens of the sparsely populated valley below. Careworn faces of citizens that are decidedly entering the elderly age bracket peer out their windows and roll their eyes--business as usual in the state of Montana.

Somewhere in that valley bleary eyes are opening a few minutes shy of an alarm. Glaring through the gloom at the digital clock face from where it mocks her and sweeping bed-mussed hair from where it obscures vision. As if on cue the cellphone on her nightstand starts to trill and the sheets and blankets are tossed off with a growl. _I’m up. I’m up._

“Y-Yeah?” Clearing her throat as she stutters the first words of the day, bent nearly in half on the side of her bed.

“Hey Rook, haul your ass outta bed. We got something.” Staci’s voice crackles with a tinge of amusement that is not lost on her and she finds her eyes rolling heavenward first before her feet find purchase on the cold wood floor.

 _I fucking hate mornings._ “There better be coffee when I get there, Pratt.”

He utters something in the affirmative and she hangs up, fighting the child-like urge to pout and thrash. The shower is a cursory affair, hurriedly scrubbing at her face and body, going so far as to snatch the toothbrush and the paste from the counter and ignore the spatter of water as it’s flung from her flailing arm.

Pulling her uniform from the closet she groans inwardly as she peers outside for the first time. Near whiteout already. Driving in will be a _blast._ Tucking her shirt in, lacing up her winter boots and flinging on her Carhartt, the damp auburn braid that slaps against the rough texture of the coat is probably the only reason she remembers to mash the Hope County skull cap down on her head before she’s trudging to her pickup. With the keys in the ignition and the engine shuddering to life she glares down at the pack of cigarettes that mock her from the center console.

“I don’t need you,” she mutters, pulling one out anyway. Cracking the window, cranking the heat, and cupping her hands around the lighter she says a little prayer to the vehicular gods before inhaling sharply on her cigarette and flipping on her headlights, barreling out into the storm.

* * *

She manages to make it in with little incident, watching the more reckless and snow-loving of Hope County attempting to reenact a few Clutch Nixon feats on their sleds. The children are rejoicing the fact that book-learning has been put on pause due to inclement weather. Typical Hope County (at least that’s what she’s been told.)

Out-of-state transfer. A bonafide rarity in this, a rural area, that prizes its homegrown daughters and sons above all else. Utah isn’t exactly tame and citified, depending on where you went, but it just was not like...this.

Everyone knows everyone and their business to a certain degree. They seem to know all about _her_ at any rate, and even though it’s been a few months she still finds it disconcerting. The newness of her will rub off eventually, her uniform will lose its starchiness and her boots will be scuffed and she will assimilate. Eventually.

Pulling up to the station she notes how muted the snow makes everything seem--sound, lights, everything is quiet and soft. She doesn’t realize it now as she steps out to be assaulted by frigid wind, but this will be among the last peaceful memories she’ll have for a very long time.

The second she has a foot in the door of the station Staci’s there to greet her with a thermos, pushing her back out into the cold. “We gotta go now, Rookie. Don’t worry, I’ll drive."

* * *

A half hour passes in relative silence, only broken by the occasional crackle of static and sporadic reports from Nancy of various goings-on that apparently Hudson is handling. A half hour and the thermos is already half-gone and she feels a little more human and less like a bear.

“You gonna tell me what’s going on or am I gonna have to guess?” Amber eyes watching him counter-steer so effortlessly through the snowdrifts that catch and pull at the tires of the repurposed Bronco.

He glances at her out of the corner of his eye, mouth twitching beneath that sorry excuse for a mustache that all young male cops seem to think is as necessary as the uniform. And the look on his face? It’s like he’s about to let her in on a big secret.

“We got a body,” he says finally, and the level of excitement in his tone suddenly inspires a bad taste in her mouth. “‘Member that guy I told you about that lives in an honest to God bunker on that island in Whitetail Park?”

She nods.

“Well, his buddy works with Fish and Game and local farmers as a kind of pest control. Guess he radioed Dutch this morning sayin’ he found the body of a woman on the banks of Wishbone Lake out by Drubman’s place.”

Dutch. She vaguely recalls Whitehorse talking about him. Sometimes a voice that didn’t belong to any of the few bodies that comprised the Sheriff’s Department would bust in on police frequency claiming to be a ‘concerned citizen.’ That Dutch?

“Why didn’t this guy just call us himself?” Looking out the frost-glazed window as cars drifted past with young kids hootin’ and hollerin’ and blaring whatever the hell passed for country music in this day and age.

“Guess he’s not one for the modern age. Dutch says he doesn’t even have a cellphone. Anyway, Joey says it’s high time we get you something interestin’ to work on aside from cow tippin’ teenagers and Whitehorse is still on light duty. ”

She grunts to show she’s heard, cogs and gears starting to whir. The Sheriff had suffered a heart attack early in the month, the stress of the job combined with the dissolution of his marriage had nearly killed him from the way Hudson had made it sound. This was all revealed to her under the strictest of confidences, of course, if such a thing could exist in such a connected place.

“Well, let’s try not to fuck it up. He’s meeting us there, anyway. The guy. Says he’s got something to show us.”

Aside from the corpse of a young woman? _Wonderful._ Staring at the unforgiving landscape around them she’s already started to imagine what the woman’s last moments on earth were like.

With the coffee turning into a lead weight in her stomach she shivers in spite of the near roasting temperature in the Bronco.

* * *

When they arrive at the scene Hurk Senior is squaring off with a taller figure that must belong to their informant. With his back to them and his hood up she can’t make out any other detail other than that Senior is probably going to find himself in a world of hurt if they don’t intervene.

The Bronc’s barely slid to a stop before she kicks her door open and starts toward them, the man’s voice quiet in comparison to Drubman’s hounddog caterwaul. Whatever he’s saying is lost to her ears but not to Hurk Senior and whatever it was must not have been friendly as the older man moves to take a swing.

And unfortunately for the Junior Deputy, she slides between them at the exact moment his fist would have made contact with air. Her left cheek catches a glancing blow that threatens to send her toppling backward if not for the hands that shoot out to steady her.

“Aw hell, Mr. Drubman!” Pratt is trying to keep a straight face, no doubt cataloging this event to be shared with the others later for a shared laugh at _her_ expense. “What the hell is going on here? Can’t go ‘round hittin’ people, ‘specially an officer of the law!”

Hurk Senior is huffing and puffing, eyes cut serpentine and voice full of vitriol. “That fuckin’...trespassing! He’s trespassing!”

“Sir, you don’t...own this part of the lake.” Pratt adopts a patient attitude as a parent might with an unruly child, and that suits the rookie just fine as a gloved hand taps at her face. Briefly entertaining the idea of clocking the old man back for good measure.

“This is an active crime scene, Mr. Drubman. Please return to your residence. I don’t wanna have to file up a report that you assaulted a Deputy.”

The stranger finally talks from the shadow of his cowl, and all she can see is a brief glint of teeth bared in a malicious grin before it’s swallowed by a thick scarf. “Yeah, weren’t you thinkin’ about trying to run for office at some point? Wonder how that would look?”

Senior blanches, just barely. The wind slowly being let out from pompous sails he deflates and edges backward, but wags a finger in their direction anyway as if to keep up the pretense of power. “I see you back here again, we’re gonna have problems.”

He finally stalks back to his Jeep and roars off.

“Fuck him,” Pratt dismisses the incident with the wave of a hand. “Now where’s this body at?”

Wordlessly the figure turns and leads them down to the riverbank.

“I didn’t move her,” he mutters softly to Rook’s right. “Wherever she was runnin’ from she came barefoot.”

Her extremities are discolored, a halo of inky black hair fanning in the broken ice along the shoreline. Perhaps the only reason she’d been found at all is due to the fact that her tattered white nightgown is wrapped in broken branches from a tree that met its end along the shore.

“Pratt, take pictures and then we’ll flip her.” He starts saying something like he’s about to argue, but then he sees the look in her eyes and the swelling on her cheekbone and maybe Deputy Douche is feeling just a little...guilty?

Her cheek stings, whether from the whipping wind or that pansy punch she can’t be sure. But as the shutter clicks on the camera she finds herself watching the figure in her peripherals. They haul the body up and out of the water, rolling it over to reveal a woman whose pallor seemed...unnatural. Even in death. She was pretty though, a face carved from pre-Cambrian cliffs. Full lips, prominent cheekbones.

Agony is written into her features, the bloom of blood that they had seen when they had pulled her face from the frigid water, telling her a story in a language she wasn’t seasoned enough to understand just yet.

“She was runnin’ from something and she’s been dead for less than 24 hours.”

Rook looks up sharply, wishing that she could see this man’s damned face. It’s only extreme outerwear and a rifle slung across his back. “Why do you say that?”

“Educated guess. Most women I’ve known don’t just fly out of their house like a bat out of hell in the middle of a bad storm with no shoes in their nightgown. Other things.” She stares at him, Staci still snapping pictures.

“Pratt, radio Hudson. Ask her to get the Crow Tribal Council on the phone, ask ‘em if they’re missing anyone.” Pratt grumbles again, but it’s honestly out of reflex at this point as he retreats back to the warmth of the Bronco.

“Listen, Mister…” She pauses, waiting for him to fill in the blank. When he doesn’t oblige she huffs, rising to her feet and drawing closer. “Mind droppin’ the hood? I like seeing who I’m talking to.”

He grunts, but does as she asks, dropping his hood and yanking down the balaclava as she offers him her hand. “Deputy Fox, and you are…?” Finally able to focus on his facial features she begins to understand why he might not have wanted to reveal his face, inclement weather aside.

“Jacob. Jacob Seed.” Red hair, sharp blue eyes. His chin juts out as if to say _there are you happy now?_ Snowflakes are already catching in his beard, falling into the divets the scars on his face have formed. He knows she’s staring, _she_ knows she’s staring.

“I found more tracks.” He gestures west, breaking the silence. “Wanted to follow ‘em before the snow took ‘em.”

“Just how well do you know the terrain around here?”

“Like it’s my job,” he deadpans.

 _Okay, asshole._ “I’m coming with you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song that inspired the title is ‘All My Tears’ by Ane Brun. You may recognize it from such shows as Hell on Wheels or Peaky Blinders and given the religious context I thought it fitting. The title for this particular chapter was inspired by the song 'Hardscrabble Elegy' by Dickon Hinchliffe.
> 
> Also, some of you are probably wondering at how the hell Jacob Seed and Dutch are friends, and trust me I plan to explain why as I choke-hold the writing muse I have for this fandom. Hopefully it lasts. I did a lot of research both on Far Cry and general criminal elements while outlining my idea for this fic and I guess if I wasn't already on a watchlist I probably am now. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	2. blood upon the valley

“Your _colleague_ going to be okay by himself? Where I’m going that rust bucket ain’t gonna make it.” He jerks his head toward the Bronco, to where Staci’s nonchalantly yammering away on the radio. _Poor Joey._

“He’s a big boy, he can take care of himself. We gotta get her body out of the water first, the faster we get her to the medical examiner the faster I can get some answers.” Her eyes turn flinty, mouth set in a hard line.

“What about you? Your face is swellin’ up.” There isn’t any real concern in the words as they are spoken, more point of fact as those eerie blue eyes assess her.

“Drubman hits like a bitch, I’ve gotten worse from my two-year-old niece. C’mon, give me a hand.” She ignores the smirk on his mouth, but not the way it fades when she gestures to the body of the young woman.

His jaw works like he wants to say something, tension tugging at the muscles in his neck. He does not want to actually touch her, and she’s about to make a wry comment about Mr. Consummate Outdoorsman and then...she realizes not everyone is numb to the horrors that mankind is capable of inflicting.

If only she knew, if only.

“It’s okay,” her hands held up to placate him. “Pratt’s gotta do _something._ Just give me two minutes.”

And with a flip of her braid, she saunters away to drag the other Deputy from the Bronco before he can open his mouth and growl out a reply. Staci does not look pleased as he pulls at the latch to disengage the tailgate.

“You didn’t say anything about body transport, Rook!”

“What the fuck did you think we were going to do? You really think the van’s gonna make it out here? Hell no. Now lay out the damn tarp, we ain’t got all day.” She operates as if everything is business as usual as if that strange man Jacob Seed is not watching everything she does.

 _Predator’s eyes._ The thought bubbles up and expands across her consciousness. _That’s what they remind me of._ She steels herself for what must come next as Staci hoists the young woman by her midsection and she loops her arms around her legs. In transit to the Bronco something falls to the ground, a wadded up waterlogged piece of paper.

“I’ll grab it...after.”

They huff and puff, but she’s in and Fox waves Pratt away as she leans over the young woman. “I’ll find out who did this to you, honey. I promise.” And then she wraps the woman up like she’s tucking in a small child, well aware that she cannot feel the warmth...or cold. Or anything ever again.

Old memories rise as bodies are wont to do and a familiar sadness tugs, worrying at a frayed seam. A scar not yet healed. _Not yet. Can’t deal with that yet._ She sighs and shuts up the Bronco before turning back to Pratt.

“You go bring her back, I’m going with him to see how far we can trace her before the snow wipes it all out.” Jerking her thumb in the direction of the looming figure, that red hair stark contrast against the bright white snow.

Staci catches her hand, frowning. “You sure that’s a good idea, Rook? There’s something off about that guy. There’s nothing to say he didn’t fucking do this.” There’s an angry hiss in his words, voice kept low so that Jacob can’t hear him.

“Maybe, maybe not. We’ll find out won’t we?” She shakes off his hand, pats her piece from where it’s hidden. “Don’t worry about me, you know I can take care of myself. I always have a backup and a backup to that backup.”

Staci glares, nostrils flaring. No matter how she attempts to placate him he knows in his _gut_ something’s going to happen. There is this feeling he has been trying to pinpoint from the moment he woke up that has been stewing in the back of his mind. It is as though the air around them is gathering, gathering. For what? “If you don’t radio me every hour I’m coming lookin’ for you.”

Fox picks up the piece of paper, stuffs it into her pocket for safe-keeping and trudges toward Jacob Seed, ignoring all the nagging voices in her subconscious and their incessant warnings of impending doom.

“Shall we?”

He says nothing, pulls up his balaclava and his hood and stalks off.

“I can tell we’re going to get along _famously._ ”

* * *

Turns out he was not kidding when he said he planned to go where cars could not follow, though she suspected he had never been prone to jest a day in his life. Around a small mound of snow is his sled, camouflaged and near invisible.

Seated on it she stubbornly refuses to touch him as they roar off, but given the speeds at which he’s decided to travel, she gives up with a muted growl of frustration and settles her arms loosely around his midsection. If he cares he does not say a word, not that she’d hear him anyway as the winds howl, snarling and hungry like the wolves on a Hunter’s Moon.

Occasionally the sled slows, his arm jutting out to point at the tracks half-obscured by snow. On one of these occasions she hears him say something she can’t quite catch, fighting to keep her teeth from chattering. “What was that, Mr. Seed?”

“Rook. Rookie? You don’t seem...new.” Small talk. He’s trying to make small talk?

“I’m not...exactly. Just a transfer and since I’m new to the department and rural policing that’s the name they stuck me with. What’s a little light hazing among coworkers, right?” Her brow furrows when he doesn’t respond and she is beginning to discover that she _really_ does not like trying to interpret reaction from a person’s turned back.

“What about you? I’ve met some of the Fish and Game guys. Never seen you before.”

He kills the engine, throws a scarf in her face and starts wading through the snow. _Who taught this man how to hold a conversation?_ And then she realizes that he has seen something of interest and her skin prickles, suddenly very aware that this place is nowhere she recognizes. That help is more than likely very far away if anything goes awry and just what the _hell_ had she gotten herself into this time?

She rises, taking the scarf he had so _politely_ offered and wrapping it around her face. Hands swatting at her thighs in the hopes of smacking feeling back into them. She falls in step beside Jacob, watching and listening as he quietly explains the depth of the footfalls; how to tell when someone’s been running.

His sharp eyes catch on things like broken twigs and the direction in which they are snapped, calling her attention to frozen blood clinging to one such branch. Pointing out that the rest of the tracks are lost to the snow drifts, but that other snowmobiles have undoubtedly been through and recently.

“Jesus, I would never have noticed.”

He huffs in response, a sharp puff of white caught briefly in the air. “You haven't been taught what to look for, that’s why.”

“Not for lack of trying, buddy, trust me.”

She turns in a small, tight circle trying to put herself in the Jane Doe’s shoes. “Where do you think she was coming from all the way out here?” In the summertime Hope County was still dangerous--wildlife, teenagers, drunk old men with itchy trigger fingers. In winter, though? The climes were harsher, more unforgiving. So much so that the woman must have known she was dead before she even set foot out whatever door she had run from.

“The F.A.N.G. Center is South of here, there’s an airstrip to the east but we’re talking miles.”

“Well, she didn’t just fall out of the damn sky. Something happened to her, but without evidence they aren’t going to list it as homicide if the M.E. can’t turn up anything.” Without realizing it she has started to pace, anger seething in her gut. If there was a killer hiding in the ranks of Hope County she wanted them excised, pulled out like a rotten tooth. Not left to fester, not so she could find more corpses that she could not help. _This can’t be like last time._

A gloved hand falls on her shoulder, halting her frenzied movements. She stills under the weight and though his face is hidden again she sees the expression in his eyes before it is lost behind a wall of ice. Kind recognizes kind, isn’t that what her father had always said? _Don’t fucking think about him._ She’s about to say something when a shot rings out in the clearing and before she realizes what’s happening she’s on her back and Jacob?

He’s covering her body with his, wild-eyed and lost to human reason. “Are you hit?” Even his voice is unrecognizable now as he hops to a crouch, the rifle into his hands, to his shoulder before she can blink. Brain still fighting to process the events across the span of the past thirty seconds she barely has time to shake her head before more shots ring out and bury themselves in the snow a few feet away.

 _What the fuck?_ Her hand reaches for her service weapon, inching out from under Jacob. Adrenaline begins to roar in her veins and for a moment she doesn’t feel the cold or the dull ache of her cheek, even the initial panic fades. In its place a grim resolution grows, and the only directive is to _survive._ Jacob’s hand fists in her jacket, yanking her toward cover, to the snowmobile they had left.

“Move! Move!” His head whips right when it should have gone left and then and there he could have been dead. Could have been, but isn’t. She pulls him back, her arm raised and it happens as if in slow motion: the safety is flicked off, hammer cocked. It is nothing like a Tarantino movie where the head explodes into a pulpy mess, gore splashed artfully throughout the scene.

The body drops and the snow takes it like it was never there. Another pair of hands snatch at her and as she and Jacob are prized apart her body...reacts. On the ground again with a man on top of her, except this one knocked the gun from her hand and is currently attempting to choke the life out of her. Somewhere in the distance she hears a guttural scream that does not or should not belong to another human being, more gunshots. The screaming does not stop.

_I am not going to die here._

She squirms like a fish out of water, legs wrapping around the man’s waist in a closed guard, hands wrapping around either of his elbows and locking them in place by making bars of her arms. Before he can realize what’s happening, even as little black dots begin to creep in around the edges of her vision, she forces his elbows down and hikes her legs higher around his shoulders and squeezes like her life depends on it. He squawks his surprise, bones creaking under the pressure as she kicks out and rolls away, fighting to stand.

 _Seed._ She lopes down the hill, her foot sinking and snagging on a group of rocks hidden below. Her ankle rolls and the last thing she _really_ remembers is the fall, the sound her skull makes when the butt of a gun collides with it.

Later she’ll remember it in fits and starts. A red ghost rising from the snow, the wet crunch of cervical vertebrae snapping. Remember the dull roar of an engine, her face pressed into fabric, held in someone’s arms. Trying to move her head, and seeing red. Looking up at the pines bleached white by snow, terror oozing through tired veins because it’s all death and maybe she’s dead too.  


* * *

She isn’t.

She wakes with a sharp gasp, shooting up as though jolted by electricity. Something large and furry startles from where it was sleeping on the opposite side of the...bed. She’s in bed. Where? The events of the day coming rush back to her and so does the pain as she falls back against the pillow with a gasp.

“ _Motherfucker.”_

She blinks and props herself up on her elbows, surveying a home that is...definitely not hers. The furry thing is a dog of some sort, or maybe not. It’s the face and the eyes that give it away if nothing else, too sharply angled. Wild in the eyes, even if those eyes are regarding her with a certain level of reproach for disturbing its rest with her thrashing.

Are those...candles? Fire. There’s no electricity.

The cabin door swings open and she scrambles backward, hissing as pain moves through her in tremors. A body fills the frame, head swinging in her direction. _Jacob Seed._ “Where...where are we? What is the furry thing? And Good God, you look like hell.”

He grunts and limps toward her, something that might have been a wry smile hanging on his mouth. “Home an--”

A radio in the cabin erupts. “Kid! Hey kid! You home? I’ve been trying to hail you for four fuckin’ hours. Come back.”

Jacob sighs and leaves her questions unanswered, lumbering briefly out of sight. She can hear him, sighing into the receiver. “Someone was out there cleaning up the mess they left, Dutch. I’ve got her back at my place, the storm’s bad. Tell her boyfriend in the Department I’ll bring her home in the morning.”

 _Boyfriend?_ She mouths to the monster canine.

“I’ll tell him, but listen. I was on the phone with Earl earlier and uh...the body went missing, over.”

“MISSING?!” She squawks from the other room. Jacob ignores her and Dutch continues.

“--tolen. But uh, I think they got the dentals before it was Houdini’d outta there. Be careful, y’sure you weren’t followed back? Over.”

“I’m sure. Marked the spot, you can come help me play trash collector. Gotta go, Dutch.”

“Be safe kid, Dutch out.”

He re-enters the room to find her trying to haul herself off the bed and promptly pushes her back. “No.”

“No? No?! We almost fucking died. That girl’s body was stolen from the fucking morgue. Now we have less than nothing. Less than…” She feels tears threatening and bites the inside of her cheek hard enough to bleed.

“No,” he affirms. “We lived. You have the pictures, you have that piece of paper that fell from your pocket. It’s still there. Those bodies in the woods.” He ticks them off on his fingers before that hand descends to rub the head of his giant animal companion.

“Fuck it, I’m not arguing with you right now. Rewind. Where, what, and you look terrible.” Amber eyes jump around the room, studying the walls. Spartan. American Flag. Gun racks, no trophies. Fishing rods. A picture of an older man and a younger Jacob both flipping off the camera. _That’s important remember that for later._

He shrugs and it occurs to her that there’s a red spot spreading across his shirt. “This is a cabin. My cabin. I live here. That’s Friday, she’s a friend of mine. And you don’t look much better, Deputy.”

So he’s Snow White, friend to White Fang, what the hell does that make her? She’s off somewhere in her head when she realizes he’s pulling up a chair and throwing the blanket off her leg. “Need to look at this. You uh...you cried a little when I pulled the boot off and kicked me so I let you be after that. You’re stronger than you look.”

She freezes, watching his hand hover over the sock. “Don’t forget it,” she mutters. “Though I’ve been told dumb luck is what’s gotten me through roughly half of my life.”

“Not today,” he pulls the sock off slowly to reveal the mottled purple of her swollen foot. His fingers dig in gently, checking for breaks. “Luck? That doesn’t live out here. What you did today? That was you.”

Her hands are balled into fists because she refuses to cry out. Quiet because there’s a part of her that doesn’t like the serious tone in his voice, a part of her that cannot and will never be able to take a compliment. That _was_ a compliment, right?

“It’s not broken, just a bad strain. I’ve got something for the swelling.”

“Yeah? Is it liquor? Quite frankly, I need a drink and er...you’ve got red on you. I can stitch. Favor for favor.”

Blunt fingertips touch the wet fabric, frowning at the red stain. “Yeah...yeah.” He gets up and limps away, cupboards rattling. Her eyes snag on a camouflage jacket hanging in the corner, eyes squinting against the candlelight. _82 Airborne._

When he comes back into the room with the first aid kit and a bottle of Macallan she wiggles her good foot, a hand resting on Friday’s shaggy head. “Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die. He ain't gonna jump no more.” Her voice is soft, not bad really.

“Where...uh…”

“My Grandpa used to sing it under his breath sometimes. Airborne, huh?”

He nods but does not say anything else about it. _Back to the brick wall routine._ “Okay, we won’t talk about it. Come sit down, it’s getting worse.” She sits up, wincing as her foot twinges and all the bruises that populate her body protest. His actions are stiff as he descends onto the mattress next to her, peeling off his shirt takes effort and she can see it in the way his mouth thins.

The scars are everywhere. They mottle what she assumes is a military tattoo, but some of the scars she sees...some of them aren’t the result of burns or shrapnel. Some of them she recognizes for what they are. It’s easy to get distracted then, pulled into the black and blue ridged flesh. Dried blood, a gash here and a gash there. A haphazardly patched bullet wound bleeding through the cotton packing he’d stuffed in there as an afterthought.

“If you wanna ask, just ask.” Gruff as he uncorks the bottle and takes a swig his eyes follow her hands as she pulls open the kit, using the hand sanitizer she finds within to scrub up.

“Doesn’t mean you’ll answer though, right?” Countering with a small smile, leaning close as she flushes the bullet wound. “Why the hell didn’t you fix this up right away?”

“I pulled the bullet out. Cleaned you up first.”

She isn’t sure what to do with that. What could she do with that? “Oh.”

Three wounds that require serious attention. “Tell me a story while I do this, Mr. Seed. Please.”

“Jacob.”

She rolls her eyes. “Okay, _fine._ Jacob. Tell me about how you met Dutch.”

“Dutch? Christ, why?” He grunts as watches her with the needle.

“Because he’s important to you, and I saved your life. Consider that your debt. One story.”

He offers her the bottle and she takes it, sucking down a large swig. “Don’t let me have any more of that until this one is closed up, alright? I don’t do sloppy work.”

She looks up at him expectantly, ignoring his sour expression. A heavy sigh begins to fill his chest until she taps him and shakes her head. “Fine. Not like there's much left to fuck up anyway.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♫ The River by Blues Saraceno
> 
> Are you surprised I added a second chapter this quickly? I am too, honestly. Who were those guys in the woods? What was so important about that body that it was stolen from the morgue? That defense maneuver the Dep pulled is actually a jujitsu move and there's videos of that floating around Youtube if you were interested in checking it out. The song that the Deputy sings to Jacob is "Blood Upon the Risers" and it is an American paratrooper song from World War II. They still sing it to this day in all the current airborne units. You can also find it on Youtube. Also, does anybody else sense a flashback coming on? I know I do.


	3. i don't know lord (what i'm looking for)

**Fort Benning, Georgia**

**December 20th, 2001**

Nearly two months have passed since his medical discharge and admittance into the VA Ward for ‘long term care.’ Nearly two months of having an orderly tell him to lift his tongue to make sure he was taking his pills, bed checks and flashlights winking on in the night. Only now they have learned to be careful when they sweep into his room after an incident that nearly resulted in one of the orderlies leaving the facility in a bodybag. His C.O. still checks in every so often, listens to him beg over the phone to let him come back,  _ please.  _ It isn’t even that he misses it so much as it served as a weighty distraction to this nameless panic that has bled into his bones. 

Now a rudderless ship left to rot and be ravaged by time, they prod him to share in group and lay bare all the sins that stack themselves up on his broad shoulders like cords of firewood. Like the weight of the heavens on the back of Atlas, he does not grin but he fucking bears it. 

Instead he feigns sleep and tries to chase the impossibly pale figure of Miller out of mirrors and from behind the doors. It takes them awhile to realize he has been hording the sleeping pills and when they come for him with the needle it takes about half the staff to subdue him.

“Easy, easy…” They talk to him like he’s a spooked horse as he screams and thrashes. A raw howl of despair trapped in his burning lungs as the needle pricks the skin and the plunger is eased down. They say he won’t dream at all as they lower him to the floor, but he knows better and so does the man watching him from a wheelchair a few feet away.

Miller finds him in the broad crimson scope of his nightmares. All the hands twitching and spasming in the bloody sand tangle around his feet, pull him apart. The night crew listens to him scream in his sleep the whole night through.

He awakes the next morning to the sound of metal tapping metal and he’s up double quick, fists curled and teeth bared. Fear and adrenaline make for a potent cocktail and for the briefest of moments it is almost as if he’s back in the Gulf, waiting for the wolves to descend until--

“You ‘bout done there, kid?”

His head swings to the right, a flicker of recognition. Salt and pepper hair kept high and tight, dark brown eyes, full lips pulled into a small smile beneath a trimmed mustache. Barrel-chested and fit, all things considered--and his legs (or lack thereof) were exactly what Jacob was considering until the man cleared his throat.

“Your momma not teach you manners, son?” 

Jacob tears his eyes away from the neatly rolled and pinned pant legs. Shakes his head, trying to find his voice. 

“S’awright, I’ll let it slide this time for a fellow All-American. Now git on up outta that bed or the whitecoats’ll come bother you again.”

And with that he wheels out of the room.

Mutely Jacob gathers the clothes allotted to him, slippers  _ god he fucking hates them  _ on his feet and as he exits the sterile confines of his room he finds the man is waiting for him.

“C’mon now, we gotta go get the table set up for the game. I got a friend coming down and I think you should meet him.”

Confusion bleeds across his features and it in spite of introduction as they walk down the hall it does not fully dissipate. Charles “Chatterbox Chuck” Diamond is a self-proclaimed relic of Vietnam, and, according to him, also the sole inspiration behind the character of Lieutenant Dan Taylor.

“Sinise himself came to talk to me, hand to God.”

_ Why am I following this man, again?  _

He chalks it up as having nothing better to do, dropping into a vacant chair away from the table as Chuck flirts with the nurses. And they honestly don’t seem to mind as they playfully swat his shoulder and saunter away shaking their heads and smiling.

“Mmm,  _ mmm.  _ If I were a few years younger and couple feet taller.” And he laughs at his own joke and why does it make Jacob sad?

“What am I doing here?” He finally asks, glaring as Chuck slaps his thigh and gasps for dramatic effect.

“Hot damn, it speaks! You’re here because this is where you need t’be. For now anyway.” He grins, mischief gleaming in his eyes. “Y’gonna remember those manners and introduce yourself or am I gonna have to come up with a cute little name for you, trooper?”

“Jacob Seed.” Even his name feels heavy when it exits his mouth, tainted just like the rest. A scarred hand closing over Chuck’s as they execute a vice-grip handshake.

Later Chuck’s friend finally makes his appearance and all the rest of the older men gathering ‘round for poker after what appeared to be a ritual of insult trading that might have horrified anyone not familiar with service humor or men en masse.

“Chucky, if you’da ran as fast as those lips of yours flap you’d still have your goddamn legs.”

“I’ve laid more pipe in this damn town than Benning Plumbing!”

“Jesus, you’re getting fat.”

“You get your hair cut in the fuckin’ dark, Smalley?”

“Once a Pukin’ Pigeon, always a Pukin’ Pigeon.”

And on, and on, and on. Surprisingly it does not grate on his nerves as much as he thought it would, listening to them rib each other as they deal the cards. Taking conspiratorial swigs from a few flasks Dutch has snuck in Jacob feels...at ease for the first time in a long time.

“You okay, kid?” Dutch peers at him over the top of his glasses and Jacob shrugs and nods, content to be a fixture in the background. He doesn’t see the specter of Miller for two blessed hours. And he comes to see Dutch every few months for a couple of days at a shot, completely ignorant to the knowledge that his life was being saved by two cantankerous vets and their gaggle of dirty old man friends.

 

* * *

 

**Fort Benning, Georgia**

**April 15th, 2003**

 

“I don’t want a handout, Dutch.”

He’s sitting outside smoking a cigar with Chuck and Dutch, the uncertainty of his future looming over him. The money’s run out, he can’t stay hidden from the outside world anymore and he  _ knows  _ this but…

There is still a fever in his bones, still a hungry maw full of nightmares stretched wide and ready to devour him whole. Every time he looks in the mirror the scars testify to what he’s known since he was but a young kid throwing himself before his father’s belt: he’s damaged goods. Now that he could no longer shoot where they pointed, no longer run headlong into the abyss...what good was he?

Jacob had spent all of his life fighting. His father. His foster parents. Social Services. Juvie. Army. His whole life had been a long drawn out passage that would always and inevitably lead to his destruction. No use to anyone, certainly not his brothers and not the society that had taught him that the only true currency of the world was pain and power.

He grinds his teeth and runs a hand over his face, ignoring the glances the other men exchange with one another.

“Listen here you jumped up little shit, it ain’t a handout. Uncle Sam might flip you the full fuck you finger, but  _ we  _ aren’t ever going to do that.” Dutch gestures between Chuck and himself, eyes cut and body buzzing at the insinuated insult.

Jacob opens his mouth to argue and Chuck shakes his head, silencing him. “Jacob, I’ve known this man since I was ten-damn-years-old. He will not stop harassin’ you until you agree, ‘sides you were never meant to just sit out the rest of your life here.”

“You’ve been friends since you were ten?” They’d never mentioned that before.

Chuck throws up his hands, rolling his eyes. “Well hell, I didn’t know any better!”

“They can’t help you here,  _ you  _ can’t help you here. You ever been to Montana? Just come with me and try it out. If you don’t like it I’ll send you off wherever you want to go.” Dutch is staring at him hard down the length of his cigar, smoke curling around his mouth like dragon’s breath.

He had left Juvie with nothing, departed from the Army with next to nothing, and now? He was under no contract, his body was no longer the property of someone else.  _ He was free.  _ Whatever the hell that meant.

“Fine, god damn it.” He stubs out the cigar on the curb, head swinging to the right to meet Dutch’s eyes.

Somewhere in his periphery he notices that Chuck is grinning from ear to ear.

 

* * *

 

**Hope County, Montana**

**April 19th, 2003**

 

It feels good to be in boots again. To be behind the wheel again.

Even if that means listening to Dutch rattle off his complaints against the United States Government and prattle on about conspiracy theories for 32 hours. There’s still snow glazed on the prairies of Wyoming, antelope lifting their heads to peer curiously at the headlights that disturb the darkness of the highway.

Watching the jagged teeth of the mountains tear into the early morning sky stirs something in him and as they make it out of Wyoming and exit the I-90 in favor of the S-224 the ‘Welcome to Hope County’ sign swims into focus.

“Welcome home, kid.”

That night he gets drunker than he’s been in a long time and Dutch insists, in a rare moment of old-timer sentimentality, that a picture be taken. A freeze frame of two men, soldiers once and forever, flipping the bird to fate and every failure.

_ It’s hope _ , Jacob realizes in the morning as he holds a cold can of beer to his throbbing head. Maybe he’ll always be broken, but here among the rabble and societal outcasts that spot the valley it doesn’t seem to matter much if at all.

And maybe he can learn to be okay with that.

 

* * *

 

And then the present comes flooding back as the Deputy speaks and breaks the spell.

“Wow,” she murmurs as she leans back to inspect her handiwork. “So he kind of saved your life.”

He’s buzzed, the bottle is a little more than half gone and how long has he been talking? What had he said? Shit. “I guess you could say that.”

“You guess?” She echoes, disbelief evident in the way her tone seems to curl in around the edges. “And they say women are hard to decipher.”

He leans away, inspecting her work for himself and is pleasantly surprised at the neatness. As he does so she uses the temporary distraction to snag the bottle out of his hands and take a few more swigs, gingerly moving off of the bed before returning the liquor to his waiting hand. “Now, am I to understand that you have an outhouse?” 

Jacob nods and points, moving to get up to help her. 

“Nuh uh. I got this.” Shoving her good foot into a boot she limps toward the door. Right before it shuts he hears her mutter a string of curses and shakes his head. Rising to his feet to find a non-bloody shirt to wear.

Later as they inevitably argue over who’s sleeping on the bed and who gets floor duty she concedes as he pulls a sleeping bag from a small storage cupboard. The cabin goes dark as the candles and battery-operated lanterns are dimmed and extinguished and they lay there listening to the other breathe and the crackle of the fire in the potbelly stove.

“Jacob?”

“Hmm?”

“Thanks.”

Weighted down by liquor and exhaustion she slips into an uneasy sleep, Jacob watching her outline twitch and kick until he too falls prey to unconsciousness with Friday sleeping at his feet.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♫ Down To Georgia by Lost Dog Street Band
> 
> So, there's how Dutch fits in. I just...I don't know. I felt like it was important for Jacob to have someone that gave a shit, that could get to him in time before the events mentioned in the actual game occur. I also wanted to stay as close to his early canon as possible so that he still felt authentic. Plus, I'm a sucker for a good bromance and unlikely as it is in the main universe I'm getting pretty fond of the Dutch/Jacob dynamic going here. Thanks for reading!


	4. in this land of strangers

Before the sun breaches the horizon he’s awake, rolling to his feet to begin his morning routine. As he rises he glances at his chest and makes a mental note to find out where she had learned to suture.  _ She. Her. The Deputy.   _ Blue eyes jump to the bed where the Deputy had spent most of the night mumbling and shuddering to find her still fast asleep, curled in a tight ball at the center of the bed.

_ Dutch will be here soon. _

He takes a moment to study her now that she’s still and quiet. The summer tan has faded from her skin, but it’s still holding. There’s only a slight discoloration to her cheek where Drubman’s fist had barely connected, but even from here he can see the ugly bruising that lines her throat and for all the bravado and shit-talking her features are pinched. In pain. That ankle isn’t going to do her any favors, not if she’s going to run after this like a starving dog chasing a meal and something in him  _ knows  _ that is just what she intends to do.

_ You’re too loud,  _ he tells her silently as picks up the sleeping bag off the floor, a quiet  _ swish!  _ of fabric.  _ You ask too many questions. Never still.  _ He carefully settles the sleeping bag atop her slumbering form and tucks it with quick fingers, pausing only when he’s hit with a hard wave of nostalgia. 

Wide-eyed and weepy John, never one to settle unless their nightly ritual of story time and back rubs were met while Joseph pretended not to listen from where he slept in the corner. Jacob was always first to rise and last to sleep, positioning his body directly in front of the door so that anyone attempting to enter would have to go through him first.

John and Joseph. His hand strays dangerously close to the sleeping Deputy’s face, freezing as she stirs. When he’s sure she is not going to wake at the slightest movement the hand drops as he backs away with a grimace and gears up in the next room--grabbing his rifle before he and Friday disappear into the whiteout beyond the cabin door.

“Keep an eye on her, girl.”

 

* * *

 

“Jesus Christ, Jacob.”

Dutch pulls up behind Jacob’s snowmobile, AR dancing on its strap. The trees in the surrounding area are riddled with bullet holes, the snowfall having covered the bodies. 

“She’ll want the slugs outta those trees, Dutch. Keep your head on a swivel.” They had spent an hour scouting from a distance because if there was anything Jacob did not do it was make the same mistake twice. Shovel in hand he wades through the snow to the trees he’d notched that indicated a body - seven total.

The first spot yields nothing but bloody snow, and the second, and the third, and...how the hell do six bodies go missing?

“FUCK!” Jacob chucks the shovel, sits down hard in the snow. He is not crazy, you don’t just hallucinate killing six people...do you? 

Dutch secrets the plastic bag of deadly metal away in his pocket, lets Jacob stew as he wanders over to where he’d seen the last notch. “There’s one left. This probably wasn’t in their line of sight.” 

Jacob says nothing, staring at his gloved hands like they were still covered in blood. Dutch grunts and stalks toward him, jerking the shovel out of the snow with a muttered ‘allow me!’ And as the older man starts heaving snow Jacob’s mind wanders miles away to a cabin that backs up into the woods. His mind’s eye conjures up that snapshot of the Deputy’s wild eyes in the clearing before the shooting began, thinking that maybe he recognized a desire to be redeemed. The whats and whys of it are not important, not yet.

And even though she had called them square after listening to a drunken rendition of his origin story the fact remained that he could have been dead if not for her.

“Hey! We got something!”

 

* * *

 

By the time they make it back to the cabin the Deputy is awake, sitting outside with her Carhartt resting on her shoulders smoking a cigarette. He sees her hand fall to her gun and wonders briefly if she found the knife she’d had secreted away in her boot. Once recognition settles in the hand falls away, leg jiggling with impatience as they kill the engines and work their way toward her.

“It’s still fucking snowing.” Her tone is flat, eyes staring past him to the dark bundle they’d hauled back with them.

“Amazing. Ever considered a career as a weather anchor?” Dutch’s sarcasm is clearly not appreciated as she flips him off, a smirk playing at the corners of her mouth.

“Well, I figured out how to make coffee and there’s oatmeal on the stove. Girl Friday’s off catching her own breakfast, so let’s get this over with. I need to get back to the station.” She moves gingerly, jerking her head to the cabin within and as she does so Dutch sees the bruises and shoots Jacob a sharp look.

Dutch whistles, low and slow. “She’s kinda sassy, isn’t she?”

“Don’t get any ideas,” comes a hot retort from within the cabin. “You’re not my type.”

Jacob manages a pained expression before stomping his booted feet and following the two of them inside. Over a mouth full of oats she relays the tale in more detail than Jacob would have ever bothered to get into, pulling out the scrap of paper she’d picked up the other day when all of this began and sliding across the table.

“I have no idea what that symbol’s supposed to be, but I think that’s a reference to the Bible if I’m not mistaken.”

Jacob and Dutch lean closer as they squint at the cramped writing.  _ REV 13:1. _

“And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.” He recites it from memory, the remnants of his father’s alcohol-soaked sermons still ringing in his ears. 

She’s staring at him now over the rim of her cup, brow furrowed. “Do you know what it means?” He is not sure if he likes the look the Deputy is giving him as she sips her coffee.

“That particular verse is referring to the Antichrist.” And with that dire statement a discomfiting pall was cast over breakfast.

 

* * *

 

Getting back to town proves to be somewhat of an ordeal as the Deputy stubbornly refuses any and all assistance. Re-plaiting her hair and washing her face with the water he’d brought to her, quietly fussing over the lump on her head and exhaling sharply when she prods it just a little too hard. When she seems convinced that she looks at least somewhat presentable she turns on Jacob, picking at the hem of his shirt to eyeball his stitches.

Dutch offers him an eyebrow waggle over her shoulder that he dutifully ignores.

Watching her shove her swollen foot into her boot is an unpleasant experience, but she does it and remains blessedly silent. The knife goes back in her boot, the gun he’d remembered to retrieve shoved in its holster.

“Let’s go.”

Hope County is buried. The plows are making an admirable attempt to clear the roads, but it all appears to be in vain as long as the snow is going. Its residents persevere, bringing food ‘round to the elderly and checking up on one another.  

Jacob eventually becomes aware of her head resting against his back as the snowmobiles roar over the glacier-like drifts that the winds have carved and slows down, if only by a fraction.  _ Shut up, Dutch.  _ Finally the station comes swimming into view and he frowns when he realizes it’s over, the disappointment lasting mere moments as Hudson and Pratt tumble outside.

“Holy fuck, Earl’s gonna be **pissed**.”

Dutch, to his credit, affects an air of deep offense. “Hey! We got her back here in one piece. And we brought you a little present, too.” Leading the deputies to the back of the sled he reveals the contents of his grisly parcel.

Jacob extends an arm to Deputy Fox that she firmly declines, and instead he counts the snowflakes as they tumble into her eyelashes. “If you need anything…” He starts and stops, keenly aware of their audience.

“I’ll call Dutch?” She supplies wryly, a wan smile tugging at her mouth as she watches Hudson and Pratt drag the frozen corpse off and bicker amicably about who is going to bring it to the medical examiner. 

His eyes narrow, decidedly unamused. “I’ve got a radio and frequencies I check.” He pushes a slip of paper into her hand and shoos her inside.

“My God, that’s the same as giving a gal your phone number.”

“Shut up, Dutch.” He tries not to fixate on her face as she glances over her shoulder while the other deputies close ranks around her with the body in tow, the cheshire grin playing at her mouth as Pratt shoots him a withering glare.

 

* * *

 

“So we’re sending the slugs to Missoula, the body is being escorted to the morgue under guard this time, and...did we ever get the dentals back on our Jane Doe?” Deputy Fox is worrying at the bump on her skull, perched on the edge of Joey’s desk trying to appear nonchalant when really she just wants to baby her ankle without anyone saying anything.

“We sure did,” Nancy pipes in, waving a manila folder. “Lana Door.”

Joey interjects. “I checked in with the Crow tribal council per your request, I didn’t come up with anything at first.” Fox’s face falls. “ _ But  _ I came back with the name Lana Door and we got a hit. How did you know she was Crow?”

“Wild guess, but they do have one of the largest reservations in the state.”

Joey nods, a frown edging in. “I had to call them back and tell them the body...disappeared. Her parents are coming in anyway and they are...not happy.”

“They’re pissed off.” Nancy hands the folder to Fox with a heavy sigh. “Can’t say I blame ‘em.”

“When will they be here?” The folder is held against her chest, teeth worrying at her bottom lip. “They’re really gonna brave the storm?” Stupid question. Of course they are. Their daughter is dead and they want answers that she is, as of yet, unable to provide.

“By tomorrow. They’ll call if they’re hung up but they want to speak to you, and the man that found her.”

Pratt staggers back in, shaking snow from his hair. “I gotta say, I’m getting real tired of being the body courier.”

“Aw, but you’re so good at it, Stace.” Joey laughs as he shoots her a dirty look and joins the party around her desk. “Earl’s going to come in and try to bark orders tomorrow so just smile and nod. If anybody sees him with any of the shit food he’s so fond of you’re supposed to confiscate it  _ immediately. _ Understood?”

Three heads nod in unison.

“Wonderful. Rook, go home and take a shower. No offense, but you stink. And ice that ankle, yeah?” And God does Fox glower at Hudson then, upset that she’s been called out and curious as to how Joey had noticed.

“ _ Fine.  _ I’m taking this home with me.” Brandishing the folder like a weapon she pushes off the desk, beelining for her keys where they hang on the wall when Staci intercepts.

“I can give you a ride home.” And it isn’t born out of some poorly constructed come-on. Staci might be a bit of an arrogant prick sometimes, but it should be said that behind the machismo there was a decent heart in there. Decent enough that Whitehorse had hired him in spite of Hudson’s reservations.

And Fox knows this, which is why she cuffs him on the shoulder before drawing him in for a one-armed hug. “What happened yesterday wasn’t your fault, moron. If anything...it was mine and I’m fine. No hairshirts in this house, okay?”

He sags against her, arm curling around her midsection. “Next time you let me come with you, okay?” His voice is thick against her hair before he draws back, cocky smile reappearing. “I mean think of my record.”

Fox smiles fondly, even as Hudson wipes away a fake tear in the background. 

“Dick.”

 

* * *

 

Home is a two bedroom one bathroom that Fox  _ swears  _ she’s going to fix up at some point, when she has the time. Nestled in the ponderosa pines across the river from Rye Aviation it’s relatively quiet, unless Nick gets a wild hair up his ass to go flying at 2AM. It is the first home she has ever bought and even though the paint is peeling and nearly every damn thing in the house with hinges squeaks like an enraged mouse it’s hers. 

Sitting in her underwear at the kitchen table with her foot in a bucket of snow she looks at the condensed version of Lana Door’s relatively short life. The fact that someone’s life could fit on just a few pieces of paper had always galled her, as if rap sheets and blood types really extolled someone’s virtue...or vice.

She stares at the mugshots, at the missing poster that had been added by a thoughtful Nancy. Pretty young girl in a field full of flowers, no doubt a head full of dreams and a heart full of hope. So different than the crime scene photos, death had leached away life, but someone had gotten to her first. Someone had scared her enough that she saw no choice but to run out into a snowstorm barefoot and she had gone  _ for miles.  _

She had wanted to live.

And so she stares at the radio where she had set it up on the kitchen counter, fingertips resting on the face of a dead girl while trying to summon the courage to hail Jacob Seed on the radio. A few tears slip down her face, feet twitching because they remember what it was to be the doe to the wolf. Sucking in a wet breath she clears her throat and stands, limping over to the kitchen counter and leaning against it as she lights a cigarette and picks up the mic, looking at the scrap of paper he’d passed her.

“Jacob? Jacob, it’s Fox. Over.”

Little did she know that he had been paying special attention to both radios all fucking day since he’d left her at the station.  _ What the hell do you care, anyway? I don’t. I don’t. _

And yet when her voice crackles across the airwaves and Friday’s head tilts in curious recognition he starts, staring at the speaker as though it was possessed. A few moments pass before he finally answers, leaning back in his chair.

“Deputy. How’s the head? The ankle? Over.” 

She exhales. “Fine, they’re fine. Got my foot in a bucket of snow, guess the storm’s good for something. And you? ...shit. Over.”

“I haven’t died of infection or been shot at again today, so I guess I’m okay. Over.” Amusement laces the words, stretches them out into warmer syllables he hardly recognizes and she responds with a hollow laugh before falling silent.

“Hey,” he starts, “wha--”

“I found her. I have her right here.” She opts for cryptic, knowing he’ll understand the reasoning behind it. “Family’s coming and uh...can you...will you please come? They’re asking.” The words tumble out fast so she cannot stop herself, but the sorrow in them is ill-disguised and he’s leaning forward, frowning.

“Yeah, I can...what time? I’m supposed to be running a trail tomorrow looking for a mama lion, but…”

“Well, that’s the shitty thing. We’re not sure due to the weather. They’re driving up from the south and I uh...kind of should have taken your proper statement the other day so…” She trails off and he quirks a brow.

“So?”

“So I’ll buy you lunch if you hang around town tomorrow.”

He smirks before responding. “Will there be another gunfight?”

“Oh, ha fuckin’  _ ha.  _ Please, Jacob. It’s important, I wouldn’t bother you otherwise.”

“I’ll be at the station bright and early.”

“Thanks. Guess I’ll leave you to it.” Her voice starts to trail off and he leans forward, all four legs of his chair hitting the wood floor with a  _ thump!  _

“Hey Deputy?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s your first name?”

“Ellie.”

“Good night, Ellie.”

“Good night.”

 

* * *

 

As Hope County settles in for the night a young blonde woman is caressing the face of another girl as she trembles on the dirt floor of an unfinished cellar. “Don’t be afraid,” she cooes. “The Father is coming.”

The young woman flinches, skin burning from withdrawal. “Who?”

“What is your name, child?” The blonde’s pupils are blown, eyes glassy and smile serene and so fully and completely empty.

“R-Rachel Jessop.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♫ Silver by The Pixies
> 
> The Jane Doe has a name! Do you guys recognize it? You might if you found the Horned Serpent Cave and found those letters concerning the past Faiths. I wanted to post this earlier but the damn power went out.


	5. no one gets to make it home

In her dreams she’s back at the foot of the mountain and that man has his hands around her throat again. She can feel the weight of him bearing down on her and as her eyes start to roll to the back of her head Lana appears over the man’s right shoulder, her jet hair cascading down her would-be killer’s jacket. Her lips are moving, whispering something to the man? To her? But try as she might Fox cannot make out what she’s saying.

Right as she is about to black out she shoots up in bed, a strangled scream lodged in her throat. Sweat-slicked and shaking she glances at the alarm and groans at the clock face, her first and forever nemesis.  _ Fuck you. _

Ripping the covers off she gives her ankle an experimental roll before standing, discarding her under things before shuffling off to the shower and trying not to think about what fresh hell this day is going to bring her. As she is toweling off, toothbrush still in her mouth, she pops the cap on the ibuprofen sitting on the counter and touches the bruises at her throat. 

She spits, fingertip pressing down on one of the bruises hard enough to elicit a wince. “I’m still here,” she tells her reflection. “I’m still here.”

_ Jacob. I’m meeting Jacob this morning.  _ Yet another thing to prepare for beyond the bereaved parents that she is only going to disappoint. And her co-workers? They had all played nice with her yesterday, but the grace period was more than likely over and bringing Jacob in to complete a witness statement? They were definitely going to grill her on all the gory details that she wasn’t sure she wanted to answer.

In truth she was not even sure she should bring Jacob Seed into it. How was podunk Hope County going to handle a private citizen reportedly knocking off six assailants with only one body present for evidence?  _ Just pray it’s the one you shot, Ellie.  _

She peers out the window, heartened to see the snow has finally started to lighten up.  _ It’s the least you could do,  _ she thinks as she finishes getting ready. Shoving her knife in her boot and reaching blindly for the gun she’d had to turn over the day previous for processing.

“Shit.”

 

* * *

 

True to his word Jacob is up bright and early, his own familiar demons releasing him from sand and accusation to consciousness with a force that makes the bed jump and shake. Even the added weight of Friday on top of him, a learned behavior she had taken to when he was caught in throes of his night terrors, provided little comfort. 

_ This doesn’t make us square,  _ Miller had reminded him. Wraith-white and desiccated.  _ Just because you saved her? It won’t matter.  _ Miller in his bloody BDUs, dog tags jingling like wind chimes between the teeth of the wolves as they pick apart the rest of his stringy corpse.

_ Like I need the reminder. _ Running a calloused hand over his face he wills himself not to shudder.  _ Like I don’t think about all the things I did every fucking day.  _ Friday yawns and jumps off the bed, padding toward the door and trading glances between it and him, nonplussed by his self-flagellation. “I’m coming, I’m coming…”

They run. Usually every single morning rain or shine they take off on their route together, a circuitous path that Jacob had designated while rehabbing her as a juvenile rescue. His first selfish act in recent memory: loving something so much he did everything in his power to keep her wild, give her the choices that had been denied her when she was a pup while convincing himself that she was not a threat to livestock or other people...for the most part.

She’s bounding ahead of him, long body full of lethal grace. Nothing but the wind and crunching snow, mind blissfully blank, he grins and picks up the pace.

Post run and shower and for the first time in a  _ very  _ long time he’s having a dilemma about what the hell he’s going to wear. You can’t exactly show up to talk to a dead girl’s parents in a ghillie suit with a rifle and a back-country Grizzly Adams beard, can you?

Friday watches him pace back and forth in front of his very limited wardrobe, ears flicking back as he huffs his frustration. He settles on the nicest jeans in his possession and a flannel, because what the hell else does he have? Throwing the clothes on the chair he rummages in one the plastic containers beneath his bed for his shaving kit and starts the lengthy process of sharpening his straight razor, assembling his clippers.

When he’s done he glances away from the mirror to the hair at his feet and Friday’s bewildered expression. “What? It hasn’t been  _ that  _ long since I’ve looked human, has it?”

He sighs and glances back at his reflection, hand touching his trimmed beard. The scars stare back at him as they always did, more noticeable now with less hair to mute the effect. His eyes slide away, slapping the mirror face down on the table and cleaning up the mess. Shrugging on his clothes and putting on his deodorant in a fog of mild anxiety.

When he’s finally ready to leave the winter air buffets him and all the newly exposed skin turns to goose flesh before he shoves a hat down on his head and snatches the keys off the hook by the door, almost as an afterthought. Friday departs with him, a dappled shadow disappearing into the trees without so much as a ‘by your leave.’

Facing into the wind he draws the cold air deep in his lungs and reminds himself that he can walk away at any time. And when he’s alone like this there’s no one to call him a liar.

 

* * *

 

In a fit of nerves Ellie had called ahead and taken coffee orders in the hopes that though it might be an obvious bribe they might take pity on her today. Juggling the coffee carriers while simultaneously trying to keep the folder secure in her armpit and light a cigarette all at the same time proved to be a terrible idea. Luckily the sight of Jacob lingering outside the station speaking to a man in head-to-toe camo is enough to distract her from attempting the impossible a third time.

The bushy-haired man offers her a two finger salute before he’s off on his merry way, leaving Jacob and Ellie standing there staring at one another.

“Who’s the second coffee for?” She jerks her chin to his right hand, surprised to find that he was not done up like a highwayman. Also taking into account that he no longer looked like a long-lost member of ZZ Top, she sees a spark of uncertainty in his eyes as they fall to her drink carriers.

“Uh…”

“It’s for me, isn’t it?” 

He scowls, but doesn’t deny it and she laughs as she sets the drink carriers atop the snow-capped ashtray and plucks one out. “Don’t get pissy, I got one for you too. Guess if there was ever a day to double fist it would be today.” 

They trade their beverages and he grabs one of the drink carriers, following her to the covered carport on the side of the building, brow creasing as she lights up.

“What are you doing?”

“Wasting time,” she smiles, exhaling a plume of smoke. “Who was that guy you were talking to?”

“Eli Palmer, a hunting buddy. He was telling me about a new construction project he’s bidding on.” Eli had been among the first of a select few to befriend Jacob upon his arrival to Hope County; bonding in their shared interest of talking about nothing in particular while killing a twelve-pack. 

There had not been much chance to do that lately as Eli’s boy had taken ill, calling for many trips to Denver. If Eli was working again his boy must have been in better shape and Jacob makes a mental note to check back in with him later.

“Mountain Man has more than one friend? I’m shocked,” she teases as she raises one of her coffee cups to her lips. “Do you guys have a secret club? Meet up on some mountain top and beat your chests?”

He rolls his eyes and does not grace her with a response, choosing to sip his coffee instead.

“Thought  _ I   _ wasn’t a morning person,” she grouses, looking down as she drags the toe of her boot through the snow.

“I am, but typically my mornings are  _ quiet  _ and  _ peaceful _ .”

She scoffs. “Are you implying I’m loud and obnoxious?”

“If you feel the shoe fits.” He shrugs and watches her face battle with mock outrage and fail, her laughter carried above the winter winds and is it really so terrible that he likes the sound? Better than the night before, hollowed out and false.

The levity in her face slowly fades in the exhale of her cigarette, breaking his gaze in favor of the side door. “Listen, you didn’t have to come and I appreciate it, I do. But if you just want to give your statement and go...I would understand.”

She’s trying to provide him with an out, with a means to fade back into the woods where it is quiet and relatively uncomplicated. Where he has his routine, his control, and his comfort. This woman has known him for barely a day, but somehow she seems to see him better than he had previously thought.

“No. Her parents want to talk to me? If I can...if I can answer some of their questions, I will. I don’t go back on my word.”

They stand there in silence until a jean clad legs boots the side entry door open and Joey pokes her head out.

“Quit flirting and get in here! Earl wants to talk to you.”

 

* * *

 

Whitehorse speaks to Fox first, door closed and blinds half-open. Jacob tries not to make it obvious that he is watching from his chair but when his eyes slide to the officers at their desks they are, for the most part, trying not to watch him watch her. 

Staci is the exception. There is a certain degree of challenge in his eyes, lingering mistrust and bruised ego, perhaps? Jacob will not pretend to be cowed by some wet-behind-the-ears kid and makes it known when he breaks the shroud of silence cast over the office.

“You got something to say to me, Pratt?”

Staci’s face contorts, anger drawn in thick lines across his features. Before he can answer a child’s shriek disrupts as a towheaded little boy comes tumbling in with Nancy not far behind.

“I’m so sorry, Joey! Rick never came to pick him up and I…” Nancy trails off, eyes shimmering with tears and Hudson stands quickly, tousling the little boy’s curly hair before pulling open her desk drawer and giving him some crayons. 

Staci shoots Jacob a glare, but his features soften toward the boy as he picks him up and brings him to his desk. Joey and Nancy disappearing outside before Nancy has her breakdown in full. Jacob retreats back into his own head, closing his eyes and tuning out the child’s chatter until someone taps his kneecap. His eyes fly open to find the boy standing in front of him, wide-eyed.

“Whassat?” A chubby finger points to the shiny clip in his front pocket.

“It’s a knife.”

This seems to mollify him for about a moment. “Can I see it?”

“I don’t think so, pal.”

And with that the boy’s features crumple, sucking in a large breath before letting out a bloodcurdling wail that has Staci running back into the room, juicebox in hand. Jacob tries not to look alarmed and is not sure he has succeeded, hands help up.

“What did you do to him?! Travis, you’re fine, buddy.” The kid clings to Staci’s leg, still weeping loudly.

“I didn’t do anything! He wanted to see my knife, didn’t think that was a good idea so I said no!”

The word ‘no’ appears to be the trigger as the child starts to cry with a vengeance, the two men panicked by their lack of child-rearing knowledge trading stricken looks. Jacob concedes, the knife flashing out of his pocket, flipping it open to reveal a wickedly sharp blade.

“Okay! Okay! See?”

And just then Nancy and Joey walk back in, Nancy’s eyes dry though the smile on her mouth is watery at best and fades at the sight of her child mesmerized by Jacob Seed’s knife. “What the hell, guys?!”

“He started crying!”

Joey rolls her eyes. “Good God, you two! If he wanted to see a stick of dynamite would you light it up for him?”

“I just might if it means I never hear him make that noise again, almost had a heart attack!” Staci pats his chest for effect, shaking his head.

Jacob is saved by Fox a second time as her hand descends on his shoulder. “You’re up.”

 

* * *

 

Earl Whitehorse looks pale and drawn, aged ten years overnight by that bum heart of his. He knows it, too, bald pate gleaming beneath the lights of his office. The doctor had told him in no uncertain terms that he needed to ‘take a beat’ and get himself together and as hard as it was for him to separate from the department he had been doing a decent job until news of a murder had reached him. That, and the subsequent attempted murder of one of his deputies and a citizen of his county.

Fox had spoken her peace, and at times Earl wondered how it was that she could be honest and still somehow skirt around the whole truth at the same time. To his knowledge she had never met Jacob Seed before yesterday and already she was trying to protect him, no doubt worried that Pratt had given him an earful.

And he had, but Earl was so inclined to formulate his own opinions and he had met Jacob before--six years back at the very least.

“First off, this conversation is being recorded for both your protection and mine. Second off, I wanted to thank you personally for watching out for Deputy Fox,” he began, hands folded on top of his desk. “I know that if anyone else had been out there with her yesterday she probably would not have made it.”

“I don’t know about that, sir. She seemed to do just fine.”

Earl chuckles in spite of his vow to retain professionalism. “Yeah, she’s full of surprises that one. Nonetheless you have the thanks of this department.”

They sit for a moment in silence, each mulling things over before Earl clears his throat. “Due to the extraordinary circumstances, I’ll be taking your statement Mr. Seed. You are not a suspect at this time, but until the conclusion of the investigation I would politely suggest no out-of-state travel.”

Jacob nods in response. He hadn’t left Montana in years, anyway. This was home.

“All right, let’s get this over with…”

When he finally emerges from Whitehorse’s office Ellie is waiting outside. Pratt and Hudson are nowhere to be seen and Nancy’s son has disappeared.

“God, what the hell were you two talking about for that long?” 

He arches a brow, suddenly aware that she had been nervous. “He was taking my statement, asking me questions. Why? How long was I in for?”

“Almost two hours. Christ, I bet he was doing that on purpose.” She deflates, the nervous energy temporarily exorcised. “The Doors just called. They’ll be here in half an hour. I kept your other cup of coffee warm.”

“With what? Your cloven hoof?”

“Oh, you hear that Nancy?” The other deputy looks up, hand over the microphone on her headset.

“Hear what?”

“This one’s got jokes!”

 

* * *

 

When the Doors arrive the air is sucked from the room, everyone in attendance becomes quieter. It always seems to happen this way; people making themselves smaller as if tragedy is a thing you can catch. Ellie’s hands are flexing at her sides as she strides up to meet them with Jacob in tow and everyone is so god damn quiet as they file into the conference room. They pull out the chairs for William and Laura Door before dropping into the seats across from the bereaved parents.

Ellie’s hand rests on the manila folder in front of her, her leg jiggling beneath the table. Jacob cannot hear it so much as sense it and without thinking his hand settles on it, the movement ceasing immediately. She gives no inclination that anything had occurred, does not look at him at all as his hand slips away.

“Mr. and Mrs. Door,  I cannot tell you how sorry I am for all of this. For the loss of your daughter. For…”

“We’ve lost her three times now,” William leans forward, haunted eyes shaded with anger. “We just wanted to bring her  _ home _ .” His hands slam on the table and to her credit Fox does not flinch, does not look away as Mrs. Door buries her face in her hands.

“Mr. Door,” Ellie leans forward, elbows settling on the table. “I  _ swear  _ to you that I will find her. No matter what, no matter how long it takes. And I  _ will  _ find the person or persons responsible.”

Jacob does not miss the burr of emotion that chokes her voice, head snapping back to attention when Will jumps to his feet with such force that the chair he had previously been seated in slams into the wall. Sharp blue eyes narrow, moving to rise to quell a perceived threat, but Elllie shakes her head and so he stays seated in spite of every jagged instinct screaming  **threat** .

“I know that you have no reason to trust us, especially after what happened, but...believe me: I care. I will-- _ we  _ will,” gesturing between herself and Jacob, “tell you everything we know.”

Laura’s face vacates her hands, tear-streaked and exhausted. “H-How did you find her?” 

Jacob stirs, scarred hands splayed on the table top. “I, uh...I was tracking a female Timber that had been tagged and released. I was following the GPS on her collar that put me near Wishbone and I would have kept going but…” He remembers the ravens wheeling overhead, wings dipping as they fought against the winter winds. “I saw ravens circling near the edge of the lake and my curiosity got the better of me.”

He does not look away from Laura’s face, not even as fresh tears begin their descent down her cheeks. “I walked the coastline until I wound up beneath them and I--I saw her by accident, floating there. I radioed my friend Dutch and he got the cops out there.”

Silence. Deafening silence.

Will gestures to the folder still trapped beneath Ellie’s hand, Adam’s apple bobbing swiftly. “Is that...are those?”

She does not want to relinquish them, hell she should have never brought them in the room. They did not deserve to see their daughter like this, have this pale ghost burned into their mind’s eye for the rest of their lives. Was she doing more damage than good? Would this wound fester before it scarred?

“ _ Please.  _ I haven’t seen my daughter in three years.”

Stone-faced save for the slightest tick in her jaw she slides the folder across the table. The reaction is not immediate as Will flips it open and  _ looks,  _ bottom lip trembling and chest heaving. Jacob averts his eyes, the brutal truth of someone else’s world crumbling around them seeming far too private to share with the likes of strangers.

“I won’t let this go,” she murmurs as ugly sobs rack his body, slumping back into his chair. “She left us a message and I will do my best to follow it, wherever it leads.”

And then she takes Will’s hand and it’s all too much for Jacob, the walls edging in closer. All that anguish a swirling vortex with claws that begin to cleave away pieces of his composure and his eyes jump for the exit with his body following suit. Earl watches him explode out the side door, holding up a hand when Staci opens his mouth to comment.

 

* * *

 

He runs.

The whine of the snowmobile motor is almost enough to drown the cacophony of voices shrieking in his head, almost enough to shake the ghosts from where they cling to his back. Heart in his throat he flies over a drift, the shocks protesting as he slams back down to earth--easing off enough to look over his shoulder at the town and the distance that yawns between himself and that dark cloud of death.

He runs.

Wild things run until they can’t, fight until they fall. And he is not about to fall yet, so he retreats back into the pines and snow and silence where everything was routine and familiar.

Ellie doesn’t hail him on the radio that night. Or the next.

Or the next.

 

* * *

 

Rachel Jessop is a liar.

Rachel Jessop is a drug addict.

Rachel Jessop is barefoot, clothing in tatters and feet bloody when 18-year-old Wheaty Daniels nearly hits her on his ATV. Illuminated in the headlights that fracture and dance, she giggles softly as he swerves and narrowly misses a tree. 

Wheaty’s initial fear and adrenaline spike give way to rage as he stalks up the incline he’d just slid down. “HEY!”

She doesn’t seem to hear him, swaying to some rhythm that he cannot hear. As he takes a minute to reassess he sees her feet, the state of her clothes and finds his anger transforming back into alarm. “Are you all right?”

“I’m walking the Path. He says I will walk it over and over until I understand. Overandoverandover. He tried once when I was younger, but I just wouldn’t...listen to the Word.” She sways on her feet, hair the color of dirty honey stuck to her face.

_ Oh shit. Oh shit.  _ “Stay right there, I’m gonna get the rig up here and I’ll take you home.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♫ Broken Tongue by Joshua James
> 
> Wonder who Eli's working with? If I am being honest this chapter is not my favorite. I have nearly deleted and re-started it a few times due to frustration from outside IRL crap going on that is seriously harshing my mellow. However, knowing myself as I do...if I didn't post this crappy chapter as it was I would probably turn my back on it entirely, which is not something I'm willing to do. So here it is in all its cruddy glory.


	6. when the sunset shifts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ WARNING: Mentions of racism and abuse: physical, sexual, and substance are mentioned in this chapter. ]

A week and a half later and the snow has settled and Hope County with it. Frozen in a special kind of stasis that frigid temperatures and the general unwillingness to deal with them creates. Christmas had been quiet and with New Year’s on fast approach some of the populace believed the theme would carry over.

Gray skies stretch forever, the warm glow of the sun muted behind a light haze of clouds that promise nothing but cover. The sleeping trees sway as the wind works them over, shaking snow and icicles from the boughs in a gentle tinkling of nature’s orchestra, punctuated by the plaintive bleating of the lambs.

Across the clearing a ewe startles from her grazing, nostrils flaring and ears twitching. She can sense that something is watching, that the safety of the herd may very well be compromised. The others, alerted by her fear, cluster together and move as one body toward the fence line under a false presumption of safety.

Beyond, moving through the frozen undergrowth, the coyotes come slinking up.

The bravest steps out into the open first, whiskers twitching, movement slow and deliberate as the others begin to follow suit.

A sharp report rings out over the clearing, the lead coyote bounds forward: one step, two step. Falls dead. The other members of the little hunting party startle as the silence closes in again. Another shot rings out and a second coyote falls, blood matting its winter coat.

The others run and will live to hunt another day, the flock of sheep clueless as to what had just occurred.

“Jesus  _ fuck  _ that was cool!” A young woman springs to her feet 450 yards away, tugging at the ghillie suit to reveal the excitement shining in her Vistavision blue eyes. “This is what you do all fuckin’ day?!”

Jacob sighs as he sits up, collapsing his bi-pod and digging spent shells out of the snow. “Yes and no. There’s more involved than killing, Jess. Any real hunter is about conservation, not just of the prey, but the predator as well. Remember what your Grandma Rosie used to say?”

Jess Black rolls her eyes, blowing a raspberry before taking the Remington 700 from the man that she had come to know as family. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t give me the goddamn Yellowstone spiel again, I remember.”

She hugs him then, a sharp squeeze around his midsection. “Thanks Unc, best belated Christmas present ever.”

Taking his rifle back he slings it over his shoulder, “Anyone ever tell you that you’re a weird kid?”

“Uncle Dutch tells me it’s genetic,” she deadpans. “C’mon let’s go get those critters and get out of here.”

_ Speaking of Dutch.  _ He finally turns the walkie back on, radioing in to the Forrester Farm with an update before Dutch’s voice crackles from the speaker.

“What’d Jess think?”

“She likes it, I was surprised she could sit still for that long, but…” Jacob grins as Jess shoots him a glare over her shoulder, jogging toward the coyote corpses. 

“That’s my girl!” Dutch crows. “There’s hope for the younger generation yet! Oh and that reminds me. I got some news.”

“Yeah? What’s that?” Watching over Jess as she begins field dressing the felled animal he’s satisfied that she’s aware of what she’s doing. Muttering something about going to get the truck he’s facing away from her when Dutch comes back with:

“Your Deputy is back.”

He can feel Jess’ curiosity drilling into his back as he switches off the walkie, turning back around to witness a feral grin splitting her mouth. “Is he talkin’ about that gal you almost died with?”

Jacob does not dignify her with a response which she takes to mean that she is correct.

“‘Your Deputy,’” she mocks with a dreamy sigh as the sound of a knife slicing flesh fills the air.

“You wanna walk home?”

 

* * *

 

“Rachel, what the  _ fuck  _ is going on with you?” Tracey leans forward across the table, voice kept low though there was no reason for it; with the considerable din inside the 8-Bit it would take someone with remarkable ears to hone in on their conversation.

Shrinking into the confines of her heavy navy blue sweater Rachel draws her legging-clad knees to her chest and picks at the non-existent lint that has suddenly started to populate her sleeve. “Nothing, I’m fine. Promise.” 

She does not bother looking up to see if Tracey buys it, the indelicate snort is more than telling. Through her eyelashes she watches her friend sit back hard against the wooden booth, frustration spelled out in the hitch of her shoulders and the deep frown that pulls at her full lips.

“Bullshit, okay? I call bullshit. You’re lucky you didn’t lose a toe, never mind your damn feet. Stop lying to me and tell me what the hell is up with you! I thought you were getting  _ clean _ .” Tracey cares and the rational part of Rachel’s brain (what was left of it) understood that and appreciated it. The other part? Soft and wounded and not desirous of the harsh lens of truth.

_ The truth?  _ What is the truth? That there are gaps in her memory? That whatever filler there is has hands prying her legs apart, fingers in her mouth that she tries to bite off. Cold metal touching her flesh, the dull horror of familiarity attached to the outline of a face? Distorted Bible hymns and yellow-tinted glasses winking in moonlight? She closes her eyes and wills away frustrated tears.

“The truth i--” She’s interrupted as Caleb Wells drops into the booth next to her, far too close and stinking of beer.

“Hey, pretty girl.” And it echoes over and over and over in her head, a memory bubbling to the surface of an insidious voice whispering those same words into her ear. Male laughter. The stench of rum and vomit. 

“Why don't you and I have ourselves a little date? Be like old times.” Tracey is snarling at him, but he pays no attention as a finger tip slides down the nape of her neck. She’s frozen, heart hammering in her chest as a pathetic whine of fear comes spooling out of her throat like discordant twine.

And suddenly he’s not next to her anymore, yanked out of his seat and onto the floor. Wheaty’s standing over him, hands balled into fists. “I don’t think she wants whatever it is you’re trying to sell, Caleb.”

Embarrassed and spurred by liquor the ex-football quarterback stumbles to standing, teeth bared. “Fuck’s your problem, Tonto? You think she’d want  _ you _ ?”

Wheaty glares. “My name’s not Tonto, _asshole_. This isn’t about me, it’s about you. You’re scaring her. Is life after high school really so rough for you that you have to hang out here and force your company on women that don’t want it?”

Everyone is quiet save for the soundtrack of the arcade games and background music. Rachel is staring at the table, at Wheaty’s back, at Tracey slowly inching out of the the booth like a wild cat preparing for a quick and dirty strike. 

And right as it looks like a bit of violence might be about to take place Hudson comes strolling in. “I think you better get yourself a D.D. and get the hell out of here, Caleb. What would your daddy say if you came home with another arrest under your belt? Nothing good, I imagine.” A finger tip taps her handcuffs in a not so subtle warning.

Caleb Wells’ disposition changes in its entire then. Hands help up in a placating manner, lips pulling a sheepish grin. “Okay, okay. I’m fucking leaving. Don’t know what I was thinking anyway, whole county’s probably had her by now.” This last bit is muttered under his breath, but Wheaty hears it and makes a start for him.

Hudson plants her hand on Wheaty’s chest and shakes her head, the entirety of the 8-Bit watching as Caleb walks out the door and it remains silent for a good thirty seconds after before people resume their activities.

“We okay here?” Joey searches the faces of the younger patrons before her, gaze resting longer than was necessary on Rachel Jessop’s pale face as she nods a swift affirmative. 

And so Joey removes herself from the sphere of their conversation, going to pick up her dinner from the bar. When Wheaty turns to ask if the girls are okay Rachel is pushing past him, bee-lining for a swift exit. Tracey’s hand settles on his arm, mouthing a quick thanks as she lopes after her friend.  
  


* * *

Ellie has been hunting.

Bone tired, rubber-limbed. It takes every ounce of her stubborn will not to sag to her knees when she waltzes back in the station doing her best impression of Santa Claus. A spa package for the girls, a passel of toys for Travis, a set of aviators and a bag of brand name clothes for Staci. Earl gets a vinyl of Hank Williams he’s been hunting for, a cigar and a picture of the team hidden inside.

They all think she went back to Utah, to spend time with her brothers and their families. Her brothers think she opted to stay in Montana, too broke from buying a new house to travel with a promise of next year or some future holiday.

It hurt, lying to them. But with the lack of leads or connection from the corpse of the man Ellie had felled in the woods they had little to go on. Much less to prosecute. Slugs had rendered makes and models, guns reported stolen years ago. Hours of her life cross-referencing, staring at the blinking cursor on a computer screen. At Lana’s face. She starts pulling missing persons, murders. The dark innards of humanity come rushing out to greet her, offering her no other recourse than to go back to the beginning. Back to Wyola where Lana Door’s story first began.

She moves through Lana’s friends and acquaintances and employers. All these precious threads weaving all the beauty, all the ugliness of life. Bright Lana Door with a shy smile riding in the parade with her mother. Moody Lana Door and her first real heartbreak. Innocent Lana Door and her first real sojourn into the world of drugs and men.

She doesn’t discount the story of the man that had tried to kill her, for his was a sad tale as well. The only connection between the two that she could find until a gas station clerk tells her about a tent revival she’d seen, but been too scared to go to. A stripper at a club where Lana had started working to make enough money to ‘get out’ remembered men in white clothes trying to hand out pamphlets. 

She hunts.

_ “Why do you care so much?” Laura asks over dinner, photo albums strewn across the table. “What you’re doing...this is not normal police work.” _

_ “When I was younger I...I could have stopped something similar from happening and I didn’t.” And she does not elaborate ‘til later when Ellie lifts her shirt and shows her. “I was almost one of them.”  _

Remembering it now makes her cringe, a hand touching her middle reflexively. And as if somehow sensing her trip down memory lane her cell phone lights up. The Caller ID marks it as Unknown and when she answers she already knows she’s made a grave mistake.

“Stop fucking calling me. I mean it.”

She throws the phone across the room and yanks open the fridge to the lonely can of beer and bottle of ketchup dwelling within.

“Beer it is.”

She falls asleep before it’s even half-gone, drooling on her kitchen table and the spread of paperwork she had been systematically been working through.

 

* * *

 

And there sits Jacob.

Cigar smoke curling over his head, a copy of the latest  _ Longmire  _ bookmarked in front of him. There is an itch, a desire to call her that’s been running around his head all damn day. He had wanted to apologize from the start, but he couldn’t bring himself to actually  _ say  _ the words.

_ Damn it.  _

“Ellie?”

Her head shoots up off her table miles away, disoriented and hungry. 

“Ellie? Shit you’re probably asleep.”

“Not anymore. Aren’t you supposed to say over? Over.” Her voice is thick, groggy. He smiles, picturing her, but should he be?  _ Fucking hell, shut up.  _

“It’s late enough that standard rules don’t apply and I uh…”

She laughs. “Are you drunk?” 

He hears the sound of furniture moving as she speaks and cocks his head, listening. “No, I’m not drunk. What the hell are you doing over there?”

She grunts as she sprawls out on her kitchen table, staring up at the beyond ugly popcorn ceiling. “Having a lie-down on my table so I can continue this conversation. I’m done being upright today.”

“I’m sorry, I should let you go to sleep.” A rough palm falls to the back of his neck, a fresh tide of guilt crashing down. 

“Nah, s’fine. What’s going on?” Yawning as she glances at the clock on the microwave. 

“I’m not...I uh...heard you were back and I wanted to...well,” Friday is staring at him from the bed, unamused at how the conversation is progressing. “Just…”

“Holy shit, has anyone ever told you that you suck at apologizing?” Her laughter leaks over the radio, and he immediately feels like an idiot. “Two words, three syllables. Like ripping off a band-aid. You can do it.”

“I’m sorry!  **Shit.** There.”

“I know,” she murmurs smugly, shoving a sheath of papers under her head to serve as a pillow. “Dutch told me the day before I left. Said you’d take your sweet time gettin’ round to saying it. Listen: I was not and I am not mad, y’know? It got hard in that room and I told you that you didn’t have to be there in the first place.”

He’s silent, mulling over both her words and how to strangle Dutch for interfering.  _ Again.  _

“I had a lot going on after that and I thought maybe it was best to leave you be. You don’t owe me anything. Hell, the only thing we have in common is that some goofy fucks tried to murder us in the woods, right?” She is giving him an out again, an emergency exit that he could run through.

“I know you’re still there, Mountain Man. And I know you try to keep your circle on the small side because it’s easier for you, but if you’ve got room for one more friend just think of our shared trauma we can bond over.” 

_ Loud, obnoxious, uncanny ability to read silence over the airwaves.  _ “Yeah, I guess I can warm up to that idea. It was just bothering me. I used to be better equipped to handle that sort of thing.”

“Nobody is, we just get better or worse at pretending we are. Human nature.”

“Well,  _ thank you _ Doctor Fox.”

“Ass. What were you doing before you woke me up? Cleaning your guns?”

“No, I was catching up on a book I’ve been meaning to finish.” He touches the hardcover as he says it, figuring that will be what he burns up the excess of nervous energy on before he finally goes to sleep.

She yawns loudly and clears her throat. “Jacob? This is going to sound weird, but if you wanted...you could read to me? It’s so fucking quiet in this damn house. I’m still not used to it. If not it’s fine.”

Read? To her? “Y-Yeah, I can do that.”

“Great. Don’t be offended if I fall asleep, okay?”

It seems oddly intimate as he cracks open the book, figuring he’ll start on the first chapter so she has some notion of what the hell is going on and at first she peppers him with questions. Eventually her voice gets quieter and quieter until it fades away completely.

 

* * *

 

“Brother Peter, Faith is not responding very well to this newest strain.” The voice is velvet-soft, warm even, but the man being addressed shivers a little in spite of it.

“Father, I’m working tirelessly. I have not slept in days, I  _ will  _ fix it. It will be perfected.”

“I have faith in you, Peter. Please, do what you can.”

A blonde woman convulses on the table, tears trickling from closed eyes. “Faith, not Selena. Faith, not Selena. There was another, but now there’s me.”

Her frantic muttering fills what was left of Peter’s ears and he winces, catching his reflection in the glass door of his laboratory.

“There was another, but now there’s me. One, two…” She exhales so deeply that he panics for a moment, thinking that perhaps she had finally expired. He scurries closer, fumbling with the heart monitor he had yet to connect before her eyes fly open and she snatches him close. “Three.”

And the screaming begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♫ Wolf Like Me by Lera Lynn (originally by TV On The Radio)
> 
> You would not believe the things I do when I want just-in-case details. I'm talking ballistics tables, hours of research, googling plant information, general brain overload. Oh, and yakking my poor fiance's ear off with gun questions, just because -I- want to understand it in case I -choose- to include it. Jess was going to show up either way, being one of Dutch's relatives how could she not? And of course Tracey and man, I know that I wrote it but I'm proud of Wheaty. A part of me was like DESTROY HIM, KID. And I've been subtly hinting at a sordid past for Deputy Fox that will be expanded in later chapters. Some special surprises are in store for the next chapter which will feature some New Year's Eve shenanigans with more familiar faces. The battle for Rachel's soul is about to begin, kids. Or was it over before it even began? Hmm. If there's any glaring errors it's because I'm posting this at 2AM and I'm extremely sleep-deprived.


	7. everybody in the bar say 'amen!'

“Brothers and sisters, you are here today because you have  _ seen  _ the signs. ‘And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in diverse places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.’

“And have you not seen? Have you not heard? This Earth our God created has been  _ infested  _ with a pestilence--this Earth is rife with unrepentant sinners that have desecrated all of His work. Babylon is here, my children, and the time is nearing for the cleansing fire that will burn away the sin of this world.

“And the Lord, our God, has spoken to me. Imbued with the great and terrible knowledge of what is to come he said unto me: Joseph, seek out the faithful few and gather them close. As Moses led his people across the desert and Noah by ark across the storm-tossed sea so too must you lead my people.

“I will protect you, for all that I do and all that I have done is for my children, my flock, my family. Let all the hardships of your previous life leave you as we work toward our future at Eden’s Gate!”

 

* * *

 

“Good morning Hope County! While you were sleeping off Christmas leftovers and your in-laws’ insults we here at 96.3 have been assembling some great tunes to get you pumped for the countdown to the New Year. Three days, people. If you’re looking to party down Fall’s End is having a town-wide party set up and sponsored by the Fairgrave family and their establishment  _ The Spread Eagle.  _ To kick off our countdown we have a timeless classic: Bohemian Rhapsody.”

The day after is when everything starts to kick into high gear. Worrisome amounts of fireworks come flying in before promptly flying off the shelves, folks buy their hooch and batten down the hatches. If there’s two events that Hope County takes seriously it’s New Years and the Fourth of July, something about the promise of the future and singing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at full voice (beautiful or not) just seems to be something that speaks to the citizens on a molecular level.

Rolling into the station bright and early with coffee carriers buckled into the passenger seat and a haze of smoke blowing out the window; it takes a second to process the scene as it unfolds before her. Eli Palmer and a younger man are talking to Joey outside the station and judging by the expressions of all three it is not the spread of New Year’s cheer that has brought them out. 

Sliding out of the truck and ignoring the plaintive growl and churn of her stomach she balances her drink carriers before sidling up next to Joey, bumping her shoulder.

“Mornin’ Joey, Eli. Who’s this?” Ellie jerks her chin toward the kid, admiring the thick braids that trail over his shoulders.

“Wheaty, ma’am.” He sticks his hand out for a proper and polite greeting before realizing her hands are full, sheepishly dropping it back to his side.

“Eli and Wheaty stopped by to ask if we could do a welfare check,” Joey explains as she pulls her coffee cup out of the cardboard holder. Long, dark hair gathering at her neck as cool gray eyes lock with Ellie’s.

A small frown begins to edge in around the corners of her mouth, mind already jumping to some worst case scenario involving a bloated body. But as the other Deputy explains she relaxes if only a fraction, still troubled by the details as they are relayed. Rachel Jessop, daughter of Clarice and Don Jessop. Joey is familiar, but Ellie has yet to have the pleasure of meeting her.

“She’s been a wild thing since about fifteen. Drugs, truancy, running away, solicitation, fighting, rehab. Don’s loaded so he’s been able to more or less buy her out of everything, but lately he’s been letting her freefall.” Joey explains as Wheaty shifts from foot to foot, clearly uncomfortable. 

Eli’s hand drops to Wheaty’s shoulder, earnest expression on his face. “Will you look into it? He found her wandering in the woods a few days back with no shoes on, clothes all torn up. Brought her home. Saw her just the other day and she just doesn’t seem to be doing too good.”

“We’ll get on it. Thanks for lettin’ us know.” Joey offers a smile, Ellie watching as some of the tension dissipates from the younger man. 

“Thanks ladies, we gotta get back to the job site. Wanna get ahead before New Year’s Day and everyone’s incoming hangovers.”

“How is that, anyway? That island he bought a few years back is starting to look like a prison camp with all those fences. Heard they’ve been trying to get their paws on some of the farms in Holland Valley, too.” Joey’s brow quirks, skepticism leaking into her words.

Eli shrugs, shoving his hands into the pocket of his coat. “They’re all right, just another group of preppers. You know how we are.” Flashing a grin at Joey who only rolls her eyes in response. 

“Yeah, yeah. Buncha human squirrels preparing for end times,” Joey teases.

“Better safe than starvin’,” quips Ellie with a grin, earning her a laugh from the men. 

“I can see why Jacob likes you, Deputy Fox. Y’all have a good day now, might see you at the Spread Eagle if I can convince Mary-Jo to get out.” And as Eli and Wheaty saunter off Joey rounds on Ellie, a brow arched.

“You talkin’ to him again?” The two women stare at each other over their coffee cups as Ellie sighs and clicks her tongue against her teeth.

“He hailed me last night on the radio to apologize.”

“Y’know he’s a lot older than you, right?” A grin pulling at Joey’s mouth, the joke there and unspoken as Ellie shrugs and ducks her head.

“It’s not...like that. I think he’s good people, is all.”

“Sure thing,” Joey does not seem convinced as she follows Ellie inside. “Hey Fox?”

“What?”

“You’re blushing.”

 

* * *

 

“Do you derive some sick pleasure from interfering in my life?” Perched on a stool in the ‘armory’ of Dutch’s bunker loading ammunition, blue eyes glaring reproachfully at Dutch before falling back to the task at hand. 

Dutch, to his credit, maintains a perfect Vegas poker face from his side of the workstation as he dumps a bag of tumbler media into the chamber of the casing tumbler. “The hell are you talkin’ about? I’ve been here, mindin’ my damn business.”

Jacob’s calloused hands cease their work, staring pointedly at the older man who suddenly became very interested in anything but looking him in the eye. Though Ellie had warned him not to harp on it too much, how could he not? Male ego, male pride, the sense that Dutch might have said too much or something that was not true thinking that perhaps he was doing the right thing. Even if Jacob was not known for his elocution, ownership of words and actions were important to him.

Dutch knew that.

“Well, hell! I know how you get,” the older man finally concedes, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “And for some mysterious reason she seems to like you, so I figured I would explain your confusing behavior.”

Jacob’s shoulders hitch, jaw ticking. “Wasn’t your call to make, I can handle my own affairs. Barely known her more than a day and besi--”

“Don’t matter,” Dutch interrupts, a sly smile on his mouth. “I saw it. That spark all them soft romance authors are always goin’ on about. You were more alive than I’ve seen ya in years.”

“Couldn’t be all the adrenaline from nearly being killed or anything,” Jacob counters sarcastically, pushing away from the counter, stool screeching as it is forced backward.

Dutch rolls his eyes, gaze dropping back to the task at hand as he empties a pitcher of shell casings into the tumbler to be cleaned. “Jeannie was my spark. I came back from the ‘Nam with people spittin’ in my face and callin’ me a monster, a murderer, baby killer--every goddamn name under the sun. And you know what? They were right.

“I became convinced that I didn’t deserve one fuckin’ iota of a good life. Maybe you’re right Jacob, maybe men and women like us, doing the things we did...maybe we don’t  _ deserve  _ that happy ride off into the sunset, but we chase it anyway. It’s only human to seek out happiness and comfort and I’m glad Jeannie held out for me.

“I didn’t deserve it, didn’t deserve her, but God those were the best years of my life trying to prove I did. I want that same chance for you. We ain’t the same men we were comin’ outta the jungle, outta the desert. You can’t take back what you did to Miller anymore than I can take back what I did in Khe Sanh. 

“You try to be better, do better. Honor the people you dishonored.”

Jacob stirs, discomfited by the speech. These heart-to-hearts were rare for a reason. “...wait, you read romance novels?”

“That’s all you got outta that?” Dutch barks a laugh and throws up his hands. “Hopeless. But you better take that intel ‘bout the novels to your grave, kid.”

 

* * *

 

 

“God damn, Staci! I’m roasting alive, let me crack a window at least!” Ellie had already divested herself of her coat, head lolling on the headrest to fix her partner with a petulant stare.

“Fine! God, you’re whiny today. Go ahead, roll down the window so that we can freeze to death before we make it to the conservatory.”

Her finger enthusiastically mashes the button to no effect and had he not been driving she probably would have socked him. “You asshole! You engaged the window locks!” 

His mad scientist cackle fills the car before the window finally cracks and a jet of cold air rushes across her face.  _ Thank God.  _ The impish grin on his face remains and it makes him look so much younger than 22--younger than she ever looked when she was that age.  _ What are you 70?  _ Comes an amused voice from the back of her head.

_ I feel it some days.  _

“You ever met these Jessops, Stace?” Amber eyes studying their surroundings as they turn down a manicured driveway. 

“Yeah, I went to school with Rachel. She was two years behind me, but she kinda had a reputation even in those days. Regina George to the max.” He glances at her, noting the unimpressed frown that is being directed at him.

“Any odd rumors get spread about her? I’m just trying to figure out why in the hell she’d be wandering around in the snow barefoot and half-naked. Why didn’t her parents report it?” There’s a distant alarm bell that has been ringing in her head all morning and it started with El and Wheaty. Now? It’s only getting louder the closer they get.

Staci shrugs, a hand rising from the steering wheel. “Fuck if I know, maybe they just didn’t want more egg on their face. The only thing I remember hearing is that her dad was a fucking creep.”

“Wonderful.”

The Bronco lurches to a halt in front of a Georgian-style mansion and for a moment all Ellie can do is stare. From the well-loved and worn, to the downright ramshackle this was perhaps one of the nicer places she had seen so far in Hope County; excluding the Drubman place. Everything in its place, a frightening amount of symmetry and balance--from the t-shaped pergola to the way the out-buildings and atria were lined up with one another. 

Sterile, pristine, bursting with life. Green amid the frost and snow, humidity trapped in insulated panels.

As she exits the Bronco she notes how quiet it is here, the absence of animal life. “Fuckin’ spooky.”

Staci nods, gaze following the path to the one car garage. “Yeah, never was a fan. Supposed to be a bunch of rare and exotic plants--family did a lot of work with the pharmacist back in the day. One of the originals in this county.”

Ellie nods, but she’s not really listening. Focusing instead on a face pressed against the glass of one of the windows, the curtains swishing as that same face quickly disappears. “C’mon Stace, let’s get this over with. After my shift is up I gotta go grocery shoppin’, I had beer for dinner last night.”

“Ugh, no wonder you’re being a brat. C’mon then.” As they walk toward the door he pulls the hat from his head, holding it against his chest with one hand and fixing his hair with the other. Ellie does not attempt to hide the rolling of her eyes, knuckles wrapping against a door that probably cost more than her utility bills. 

An older woman answers, mid-fifties. From her tight bun to the sensible shoes and minimal make-up Ellie guesses at hired help. “Yes, officers?”

“Good afternoon, ma’am. We were hoping to check up on Rachel Jessop? Is she home?” Staci takes lead, figuring he’s just so damn cute with his ‘aw shucks’ smile. Turning his hat over in his hands like he’s made some sort of mistake and feeling pretty sheepish. 

If the routine works the woman doesn’t let on, if anything her expression becomes pinched before nodding curtly. “She is in her room, I will retrieve her.” And promptly closes the door in their faces.

“Don’t think that patented Pratt charm worked on her.”

“Shut up.”

Five minutes of standing in awkward silence at the Jessop’s front door before it opens again and Rachel stands before them. Small and frail, gray over-sized sweater over black leggings. The circles under her eyes are dark, intense even and red-rimmed as though she had been crying.

“What’s going on? I haven’t...I haven’t done anything?” The inflection betrays doubt, as if she thinks herself capable of misdeed but not of remembering it. A cord pulls in Ellie’s chest, the alarm bells clanging ever louder.

Staci seems taken aback by Rachel’s appearance so Ellie gently pushes him out of the way, assuming perhaps she might be more comfortable with another woman. “Rachel, I’m Ellie Fox. Somebody saw what happened in the 8-Bit and asked us to check up on you. You doing okay?”

“I’m fine, that was just a...misunderstanding. That’s all. A misunderstanding.” Rachel twists the hem of her sweatshirt, mouth opening as though to say something else when a tall man with salt and pepper hair comes to stand behind her. The young girl’s entire demeanor changes in an instant, making herself smaller, freezing as a hand descends onto her shoulder.

Ellie decides she does not like that hand, does not like the man it belongs to. She can see the fingertips digging into her collarbone. Her eyes cut like knives, study the face that belongs to the offending appendage and notes that it shares some of the same characteristics as Rachel’s.  _ This must be Don. _

“Is there a problem, officers?” His spring green eyes are cold, reptilian. Handsome, in a catalog way.

Ellie is staring so rudely that Staci finds his voice, “No problem, just concerned about Rachel is all.”

“Has she done something concerning?”  _ Why does that sound menacing? _

“No sir, she’s done nothing wrong. She was ju--” Pratt is cut off as the man holds up a hand, effectively silencing him.

“If that is the case I’m afraid we’re very busy. Rachel has some coursework from her internet class she must complete. I’m sure you both have better things to do. Good afternoon.”

And again, the door closes in their faces. Ellie is silent, fuming. The image of Rachel’s wide, frightened eyes burned in her brain.

“That was bullshit. Cover me, Pratt.” She pulls a pen out of her pocket, jamming it between her teeth before fishing an old gas station receipt out of her pocket. Jotting a quick note as Staci looks on.

“What the hell are y--Ellie!” She’s moving quickly through the bushes on the side of the house. To the window where she had seen Rachel watching them. 

“Hurry up!” 

She lines rocks up outside the window, stashes the piece of paper under one. Glancing up quickly to see Rachel watching her curiously before giving her a quick two-fingered salute, bouncing back to Pratt as they walk back down the driveway.

“What the hell were you doing?” Pratt asks once back within the lukewarm confines of the car.

Ellie turns in her seat as he’s backing down the driveway, staring at him. “You didn’t see that? You didn’t see the way he touched her?”

Staci glances at her, eyes widening in a way that told her he thought she was being edgy and paranoid.

“What did you leave her?”

“My fuckin’ cell phone number.”

She recognized that look. Both of them. Predator and prey.

That night she calls Jacob on the radio and is surprised at how quickly he answers, like he’s been waiting. They talk about stupid things while she cooks dinner, he tells her about hunting with his niece, about the wolves he’s been keeping an eye on in Holland Valley. She tells him about the house straight out of  _ The Shining.  _

“When are you coming down from the mountains again?” Mouth full of scrambled eggs, eating for the first time in how many hours? 

“You always talk with your mouth full?” 

“You always grunt or deflect instead of answer people’s questions?”

_ Got me there.  _ “I’m probably going to be out by the Whistling Beaver, why?”

“Well, I do owe you lunch.”

 

* * *

 

**RACHEL [11:28]:** Trace, did you tell the fucking cops to check on me?!

**TRACEY [11:35]:** No? 

**RACHEL [11:36]:** Well they showed up at my fucking house. Who else could it have been?

**TRACEY [11:37]:** Jesus. Maybe that kid that found you? What was his name again?

**RACHEL [11: 37]:** Wheaty. His name was Wheaty.

**RACHEL [11:38]:** My dad is pissed. The lady cop that was with Staci. You seen her before?

**TRACEY [11:39]:** You didn’t hear? That’s the transfer the newspaper was talking about. I’ve heard all kinds of rumors about her.

**RACHEL [11:42]:** She left me her phone number. Can you get me Wheaty’s #? 

**TRACEY [11:44]:** Maybe she’s into younger chicks. I’ll do my best.

                                      -    EXCERPT FROM TEXT CONVERSATION 12/29/13

 

* * *

 

“Good morning Hope County!  Two days away from listening to everyone’s pointless New Year’s resolutions! Know what mine is? Rock more and care less. Adelaide Drubman outta Drubman’s Marina put in a special request and wanted me to read the dedication aloud on air but, uh...it’s kinda inappropriate. Mr. Drubman, sir. This one's for you. ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ by The Who.”

The day progresses as usual. Some of the folks around the county had started in on their celebrations early and having to settle a dispute between Sharky Boshaw and Chad Wolanski while one is piss drunk and the other virtually unintelligible had definitely broken up the monotony of the day. Ellie is still quiet, ruminating on the welfare check at the Jessop place and Staci has noticed.

“Are you...mad at me? About yesterday?” Leaned back in his chair as far as it will allow without tumbling over, Staci is attempting to look casual. Attempting being the operative word here as his eyes are laser-focused on Ellie’s face as she tries to be sneaky about pulling up Don Jessop’s record.

For a moment she does not respond, too lost in thought to let the question immediately register until he kicks at her chair. “Wha---no! I’m not mad, I’m not.”

He frowns, clearly not convinced. “Why are you being so fuckin’ quiet then?”

“You have one of those so-called ‘gut feelings’ yet? I just...there’s something that’s bothering me and I need to figure out what the hell it is. Will you roll with it ‘til I figure it out?” Peering at him over the top of her computer screen she watches the tension slowly bleed from his face.

“Yeah, sure. You wanna go get lunch?” And the moment he says the word ‘lunch’ she jumps and starts scrambling.

“Shit! I’m going to be late. I’m meetin’ up with Jacob for lunch if you wanna come. I’m sure you guys could bond over your shared love of glaring contests and muscle flexing.” Keys in hand she looks at him expectantly as he slowly shakes his head.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” he frowns, eyes narrowing. “You go have lunch with your boyfriend.”

“He’s  _ not  _ my boyfriend.”

“Sure, sure.”

 

* * *

 

**RACHEL [2:44]:** Wheaty?

**RACHEL [2:44]:** It’s Rachel.

**WHEATY [2:50]:** How did you get my number?

**RACHEL [2:52]:** Doesn’t matter.

**RACHEL [2:53]:** You sent the cops to my house? Please don’t do that again. I’m fine.

**WHEATY [2:55]:** If wandering around in the woods half-naked with no shoes is your definition of fine then I think you’ve got issues.

**RACHEL [2:57]:** Fuck you. 

**RACHEL [3:20]:** I’m sorry. I just can’t...deal with that on top of everything else right now.

**WHEATY [3:22]:** It’s fine, but I mean…

**WHEATY [3:22]:** If you need someone to talk to…

                                     -    EXCERPT FROM TEXT CONVERSATION 12/30/13

 

* * *

 

“Good morning Hope County! Tonight is the night! Enjoy the remaining hours of 2013, y’all! Also, as a side but very important note: to the person that keeps requesting Jethro Tull: please stop. This station has never and will never play that crap on the air. Not after what they did to Metallica. Anyway, make sure you’ve got a D.D. for tonight--we’re getting some shiny, big city cops out on loaner so our fine men and women can come party with us down at Fall’s End. In celebration of the big day I, Wes Daniels, give you ‘For Those About To Rock’ and if you don’t know who sings this then there’s absolutely no hope for you. You’re listening to 95.3 KBAR.”

A day off. No calls, no blaring sirens, nothing.

Her fridge is stocked, the little cabinet right next to it has all her back up booze for when everyone inevitably heads back to her house. Which is actually  _ clean,  _ by the way, and not just the illusion of _.  _ Her laundry is actually folded instead of heaped on the bed to be used as a secondary blanket. She even unpacks a few boxes, hoping that everyone will be too drunk to ask why she doesn’t have pictures of her family on the walls.

Lunch with Jacob had been...interesting, to say the least.  _ Can’t believe you asked him if he was going to the Spread Eagle,  _ internally chiding herself for seeming like some starry-eyed school girl. He had not committed to it, and she had not expected him to, but he had not said ‘no.’

And that was something, wasn’t it?  _ Shut up. _

Her cell phone trills and it’s Joey, more excited than Ellie’s heard her in weeks. “Not to sound like a stereotypical girl or anything, but what the hell are we wearing tonight? Grace is absolutely no fucking help.” Ellie can hear a throaty chuckle in the background on the other end of the line followed by a quiet murmur.

“Whatever the fuck we want? I mean, I’m sure they’d all be thrilled if we showed up in skanky Halloween versions of our uniforms. I’m not really concerned as long as it ain’t a mini-skirt. We’re sensible women...some of the time.” Ellie’s looking at her closet as she speaks and at the boxes of clothes yet to be unpacked. Now that she actually has a chance to be human and dress like someone that has a life she’s having the same conflict as Joey.

Both women sit in silence for a moment, weighing their options.

Joey finally sighs, tongue clicking for a moment. “That reminds me...you wouldn’t know this but Nancy has a little meltdown around every year at this time. If she starts getting teary don’t draw attention to it, all right?”

“Yes ma’am.” Ellie’s eyes fall to the leather jacket at the very corner of her closet and a cheshire grin pulls at the corners of her mouth. “Hey, you up for a little Pink Ladies: Hope County style? Leather jackets ‘n all?”

“Sounds good to me! I’ll swing by Nancy’s mom’s place and pick her up. Meet at yours?”

“Only if you promise not to judge my little crack shack.”

 

* * *

 

“We’re going if I have to hog-tie you and throw you in the back of the van.”

Jacob’s sitting in the living room of Dutch’s bunker staring at a map of the mountains, quietly tracing a path with his finger. He carries on like he hasn’t heard Dutch’s statement, head bowed and icy blue eyes focused on the task at hand so his mind isn’t focused on something else. That does not quite satisfy the older man who slaps his hand down on the map, obscuring Raptor’s Peak. 

Dutch scowls as Jacob’s eyes ascend. “You hearin’ me, kid?” 

“No offense, but I don’t think you could lift me in your current feeble state.” Jacob’s jest only serves to deepen the lines around Dutch’s face, the older man swelling up like a bullfrog.

“I still work out! I lift every fucking day!”

Jacob laughs, inching the map out from under Dutch’s hand. “Maybe a beer can.”

If the idea was to piss off Dutch enough that he’d drop the subject it did not work, for all the bluster he was about to unleash he swallows it just as quickly. All the years that have passed between them gave a certain knowledge of the other’s ticks and dirty tricks. Instead he stares at Dutch again, arms folded across his chest as he waits the other out.

And eventually Jacob caves just as Dutch knew he would. “You don’t even like to socialize that much, why are you pushing this so hard?”

“Maybe I’m turnin’ over a new leaf!”

And now it’s Jacob’s turn to stare in disbelief, mouth edging up at one corner beneath his mustache. That’s the trouble with lying to your friends--the smart ones always know and there’s nothing to stop it from de-evolving into a standoff.

“She asked if you were comin’, didn’t she? And  _ you’re  _ the one that mentioned it to me. My God, you were Airborne not some meathead grunt. You know what Chuck would say if he were here?”

_ Oh I’ve got some ideas. _

“Fine. I don’t know what the hell you think is going to happen, but if it means you’re going to quit bothering me about it I guess I’ll let you win this time.”

 

* * *

 

Eight o’clock rolls around by the time Ellie, Nancy, Joey, Grace, and a very frustrated (and thirsty) Staci finally make it into Fall’s End. The crush of their bodies generates enough heat that the windows had started to fog and halfway there Staci is complaining about Ellie’s smoking and unsafe driving conditions that has more to do with how they’re jostling about and less to do with the opaque windows.

As the doors of the SUV are kicked open they tumble out into the night air, immediately harassed by the cold winter wind and the pulse of music. Ellie, hair like copper wire loose around her shoulders and black choker around her pale throat--Joey’s expertly drawn cat eyes make her look...dangerous. They all look dangerous. Joey’s hair falling down her back in a curtain, purple lips parted in a grin as she drops her arm around Grace’s shoulders.

Staci’s enjoying the city clothes Ellie bought him, thumbs hooked through his belt loops standing there like he’s King Shit. Nancy has to be coaxed out of the car, trying to cover herself and murmuring things about how she hates her thick thighs and how Travis must miss her and maybe she should just go home. 

They gently pull her out of the car, Grace adjusting the intricate braids and Joey murmuring assurances at how gorgeous she looks. Ellie wraps her up in a bear hug before Staci offers Nance his arm and Ellie looks at all of them now, lined up on the edge of the sprawling party with the lights of the shops and fires illuminating their faces.

Beautiful. Loved. Young. Invincible. She catalogs this moment, holds it close before she loops an arm through Staci’s free one. 

“First one to puke has to detail everybody else’s car in the Cougar costume for the rest of the year.”

 

* * *

 

God, the millisecond Fall’s End swims into focus Jacob regrets giving in to Dutch. Even Dutch looks like he’s having second thoughts, but Jess is with them and she goads them on--mischief lightening her steps as she winds her way through the throngs of people. Indeed, it seems the whole of Hope County has assembled here in en masse to get hammered.

Jess takes Jacob’s hand and  _ drags  _ him, as if sensing his sudden desire to melt into the crowd before slipping away entirely. The neon, bikini-clad angel of the Spread Eagle lingers above their heads and Jacob starts to protest in earnest but it’s too little too late. ‘Honky Tonk Women’ is blaring from the speakers, nearly lost beneath the locals singing along--the whole place stinks of alcohol abuse and fried food.

Dutch is bitching, but Jacob can’t hear a word he’s saying, lost to the din of people singing and drinking and laughing. People yelling into one another’s ears, the Fairgraves yelling orders at one another. People are laughing, kissing, clinking bottles, telling stories.

And in the midst of it all he sees her. Dancing with Staci Pratt.

A pang of...what? Jealousy? Whatever it is, it slices through him. She’s laughing her ass off, turning Staci’s head with her hand so that he can see Sharky Boshaw cutting a rug with shy Nancy. Dutch and Jess watch him stare, trading looks before Jess bounces off to the fight the crowd at the bar for a round of beer. 

When Staci dips her she’s grinning directly at him, the elegant highway of her throat leading down to the tops of her breasts. Amber eyes lock on him and she knows that he’s staring. When Staci brings her back up she hugs him and steps away, heading straight for him like hell in...were those combat boots?

“Punk’s not dead?!” He shouts, eyes sweeping up and down. She’s not completely shit-faced, but there’s a telling shine to her eyes and a looseness to her that is certainly not the norm.

“Not on my watch!” She shouts back before inexplicably hugging Dutch who is grinning like an idiot and he’s not even drunk yet.

“You seem to be havin’ a good time, Foxfire. Started without us?” 

_ Foxfire? Have I entered an alternate universe?  _ She just nods and beams, greeting Jess as she comes back like a long-lost friend. And it would seem that Jess had the forethought to bring an extra drink for Ellie.  _ What the fuck?  _

Before he can pinpoint just what exactly is going on her hand shoots out and grabs his, standing up on her tiptoes and drawing close enough that he can smell cinnamon on her breath. “Hey Mountain Man, wanna dance?”

He winces, taking a sip of not-quite-cold beer. “I don’t dance.”

Jess opens her mouth to contest this fact, recalling how he had done just the opposite once upon a time when Jess had been complaining about a school dance. Her mouth opened and then quickly shut, his glare enough to silence her.

“Have it your way. Dutch?” She backs out of his space then and there is relief, but also a flicker of disappointment as she extends her hand to his friend. Dutch takes her hand as ‘Ain’t Goin’ Down ‘Til The Sun Comes Up’ comes on, leaving Jacob with Jess.

“You’re a fucking idiot, Unc.”

_ You don’t have to tell me. _

He starts drinking.

He doesn’t stop.

When the warmth of the Spread Eagle gets to be a little too much they fly outside. Ellie lights a cigarette while Nancy steers Sharky toward an acceptable place to vomit. The cool air is a balm to the skin and Jacob is grateful for it as Dutch mops his face and exhales sharply.

“Hot damn I haven’t danced like that in...years.”

“You keep up pretty good for an old man,” Ellie compliments, raising her flask. She’s since shed the leather jacket and somehow Jacob realizes he’s had it folded over his arm. The party is still going strong, frenzied, if anything. Music and food have spilled out into the streets, but at least he can hear himself think.

They’re walking down the main drag, Staci’s singing some Jason Aldean song. Grace and Joey are bobbing and weaving and laughing. Jess is talking to Dutch about some damn thing or another and before long it’s just him and Ellie bringing up the rear.

“What’s with the get-up?” Watching her out of the corner of his eye, her hands gathering her hair up and off the base of her neck. 

“Hell if I know, but according to Joey, Staci, and Nancy it’s tradition to theme it up for New Years. I’m just lucky I missed the year someone decided it would be a good idea to do Power Rangers.” Rolling her shoulders, she elbows him then, grinning.

Why is he smiling too? He’s drunk. “What the hell are you lookin’ at me like that for?”

“Well, now that we’ve got you all good and liquored up you wanna rethink my proposition?” That grin exposes sharp canines and there’s more than just devil-may-care in her eyes.

He’s staring at her now, like a fucking idiot. Tracing the dimples her mouth creates, the way her eyelids curve as though she finds every damn thing so funny. “What?”

“Dance? They’re playing our song.” 

_ God, he’s fucking drunk.  _ There is not any real, discernible music that he can detect and she is standing in front of him now with her head cocked, hands on her hips. Some distant part of his brain is telling him to stop and go no further, but luckily that voice loses.

With a sigh of defeat he drops her jacket and extends a hand that she takes with a laugh. He draws her close and he hears it: the quiet murmur of the song she’s singing under her breath. “It’s supernatural delight, everybody's dancin’ in the moonlight.”

He finds himself singing it back to her, spinning her out gracefully even if he sings it off-key. 

“Gross!” Jess calls over her shoulder. “C’mon you guys, Joey says we’re going back to Ellie’s.”

And as they walk an ass naked Hurk Drubman Jr. runs by, screaming ‘puke and rally!’ at the top of his lungs.

God damn Hope County.

 

* * *

 

“My God,” Jacob mutters in what he had incorrectly assumed was under his breath.

“What?” Ellie’s standing with him outside the house as the rest pile inside seeking warmth and more food and probably more liquor to watch the fireworks as they blow at midnight. “She’s seen some shit, this house. She’s got beautiful bones, though!”

“Darlin’ even those bones got osteoporosis.”

She cuts her eyes at him, momentarily snagged on the epithet. “Just how drunk are you, Mr. Seed?”

“Still not drunk enough to lie to you.”

Rolling her eyes she leaves him on the porch for a moment, fetching a bag of chips and a few more beers before returning: blanket wrapped around her shoulders as she heads for the porch swing that has also seen better days. 

“Come sit down.” 

“That thing does not look trustworthy.”

“You used to jump out of fucking airplanes.”

“Used to.”

“Get over here already, damn it.”

His feet move, eyeballing the wooden contraption that is surely going to give him splinters. Sure enough as he gingerly settles on it the wood and iron groan with the strain and something snaps. They fall over, the beers flying and the chips mashed as she rolls onto him laughing her fool head off.

“If I say...you were right...will you be quiet?” Gasping for air as she rights herself, the spilled beer chilling her skin.

He rolls onto his side before heaving himself to his feet, hand closing around hers and hauling her up as well. “C’mon, into the house.”

Grace and Joey are passed out on the couch already, Grace snoring softly against her girlfriend’s neck. Dutch and Jess are playing cards with Staci and Sharky as Nancy microwaves popcorn and feeds Sharky ginger ale instead of booze.

“The hell happened to you two?” Jess queries, noting the smashed chips falling from shirts and beer dripping onto the floor.

Ellie’s phone buzzes from its place in her back pocket and she pulls it out before tossing it onto the kitchen counter with a disgruntled mutter. 

 

* * *

 

None of them make it past midnight. No one watches the fireworks.

And it is not because some disaster rends the world apart before the clock strikes midnight. Blissful unconsciousness sweeps them all like a spell. Joey and Grace on the couch, Staci passed out with a pillow and a blanket thrown over him by Jess as Nancy and Sharky grab the guest bedroom.

No one hears the buzz of Ellie’s cell phone at 1AM. All of them lost to their alcohol-soaked dreams.

Jacob comes to in the morning with blurry recollection of how he came to be on the floor wearing a t-shirt that definitely isn’t his. And there’s someone sleeping at his back. He freezes before he smells the cinnamon and picks a lock of hair off his arm. Her fists are in his back, her legs tucked into his and shit if this isn’t the most uncomfortable he’s been in...he doesn’t even remember how long.

But he doesn’t move, not even as she wakes up with a whimper and presses her face into his back. “ _ Oh my god, my head.”  _ Still, he doesn’t move. Playing possum in the hopes that she’ll disappear. Then comes a sharp jab to his ribs.

“I know you’re awake.”

With a groan he rolls over, his own head beginning to pound. “What the hell are you doin’ down here?”

She rolls on her back, careful to keep the hem of her shirt from riding up. “Dunno, guess maybe drunk!Ellie thought you looked lonely.”

He’s about to say something sarcastic, but her hand touches his and a fragment of a memory comes back to him. She’s damp from the shower, all makeup gone and hair piled up on the top of her head. She’s passing him a shirt, says something to make him laugh.

What had they talked about before falling asleep? He racks his brain trying to remember, but falls short. Her hands and feet are cold, demonstrated when she sneaks a foot up his pant leg and successfully shakes him from his reverie. 

“C’mon, someone’s making bacon.”

 

* * *

 

“Good morning amateur drinkers!” Dutch speaks a little too loudly, those gathered wincing and clutching at throbbing skulls.

“Drink some coffee, eat some breakfast. Hair of the dog that bit you.”

Joey is pointedly staring between Ellie and Jacob, unspoken question posed in her eyes as Ellie fumbles for her phone, discovering a missed call and a voicemail from a number with a Montana area code. Ellie shakes her head briefly when she’s sure Jacob’s not watching, calling her voicemail as she brings a cup of coffee to her lips.

The cup never makes it.

Color and feeling bleed out of her so quickly that when she stumbles backward, she doesn’t realize it’s into Jacob. 

“Ellie? Ellie what is it?”

Wordlessly she takes the phone away from her ear, opting to replay it on speaker.

“Ellie Fox? This is uh...this is,  _ oh fuck.  _ This is Rachel Jessop. I think...I think there’s someone in my house.” Panic, dread, unfettered fear. Rachel’s voice is barely about a whisper, as though she’s trying to hide. “I think they’re coming to get me.” 

And as the message plays out in its entirety there isn’t a person among them that seems to remember the joy of the night previous.

“We need to get to the station. Now.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♫ The Well by The Silent Comedy, This Train Was Bound For Glory by Mumford & Sons, Old Crow Medicine Show, Edward Sharpe + The Magnetic Zeros, general hootenanny music.
> 
> It's been a really tough week for me. Quad shifts (essentially living at your place of work) and fuck ass co-workers. Ryan woke up when I started writing this a few days ago at 1AM and asked me what the hell I was doing and I answered: writing a cult sermon and looking up the significance of the color yellow in a biblical context. This chapter is long, but I had a lot to say. It also finally occurred to me to add 'slow burn' to the tags because hi, yes. This is definitely slow burn. Don't worry you guys will get more of a peek into the hows and whys and whats of Jacob and Ellie falling asleep in her room, but first a descent into madness. 
> 
> Love Always,
> 
> Sybil
> 
> P.S. Joey and Grace are adorable girlfriends who love each other and nobody's gonna change my mind.


	8. (i heard) a scream in the woods

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ WARNING: Mentions of abuse: physical, sexual, and substance are mentioned in this chapter. ]

“Ellie Fox? This is uh...this is,  _ oh fuck.  _ This is Rachel Jessop. I think...I think there’s someone in my house.” They hear rustling, desperate scrabbling in the background as she continues to whisper into the phone. “I think they’re coming to get me.”

There’s a faint crackling noise, the sound of shattering glass and heavy footsteps. “I don’t know what I did, I don’t know what I did. I keep losing time and I just...I remember bits and pieces.  _ Please help me.  _ I don’t want to go. I’ll be good, I’ll be good.  _ Shit. _ ” 

Rachel falls silent then, save for the panicked breathing that fills the conference room. More heavy footsteps, men’s voices referring to ‘Joab’ and the ‘Father’ with reverence and fear. “Rachel,” comes a voice full of saccharine venom. “Rachel, The Father says that it is time to deliver you so that you may walk the final steps of The Path.”

Those footsteps get closer, closer and then suddenly recede. Just as Rachel exhales a shaky breath it sounds as though the oxygen had been jerked from her lungs before it rushes back and is thrust out in a terrible scream.

“NO! NO! HELP ME! I DON’T WANT TO GO.” Ugly sobs, the ‘oof’ of flailing limbs making contact with her attackers. Her wailing grows distant, the voicemail drags on and on until nothing...nothing but silence.

Unshed tears shimmer in Ellie’s eyes as she glares up at the ceiling, the copper tang of blood blooming in her mouth as she chews a wound in the side of her mouth. Lips twisting as though they cannot decide whether to frown, laugh, or scream. The Sheriff’s Department is as a tomb: somber and silent save for Nancy sniffling and dabbing at her eyes with the Kleenex Sharky dutifully feeds her, thumb flipping the lid of his Zippo up and down, up and down.

Earl pinches the bridge of his nose, exhaustion muddled with an overwhelming sense of dread. Grace is lingering at Ellie’s desk, booted feet propped up and crossed at the ankle as Joey bids the big city cops a safe journey. A few of them wish to stay behind to help, but the squad chief in Missoula mentions something about red tape and ‘will notify.’ Staci’s rifling through the weapon’s locker, cleaning and sorting, cleaning and sorting. 

“I’m not waiting for that warrant. I’m going to the Jessop place. The longer we wait the less of a chance we have to find her.” Ellie’s perched on the table next to Whitehorse now, mouth like a seam that’s not quite ripped. 

“We have protocols for a reason, Fox. I’ve contacted Missoula, they’re sending out a Marshal.” His words are clipped, professional. Even if he feels a new ulcer forming in his gut, even if that voicemail made him think of his own daughter, now thousands of miles away.

“Fuck protocol, fuck the Marshal Service. Joey and Staci can head back to Fall’s End, meet up with Pastor Jerome...I can head out to the Jessop’s.” She hates the desperation that’s leaking into her voice now, knuckles turning white as she grips the tabletop. 

Earl pushes back from the table, frustrated. Hating his own impotence. “Listen to me: we have next to no officers patrolling this county. No help from the city save for this fucking Marshal. We have nothing. I can’t let you risk your life alone, John Wayne.”

“I don’t have to do it alone,” Ellie slides off the table, kneeling next to Earl’s chair. “You said it yourself: we’re fucked. We don’t have to be. Deputize Jacob.” 

He stares at her from behind the lenses of his glasses like she’s lost her damn fool mind. He glances up, over her head and to the red-haired man that’s leaning against the wall next to the water cooler. He appears to be talking to Staci, but his eyes don’t leave the conference room window.

Ellie taps his hand, drawing Earl’s attention back to her face. “You know my story, don’t you?”

He swallows hard, bobs his head once. He’d wished to God that he didn’t, tried to forget it because she seemed to prefer it. He knew.

“Then with all due respect you know that I will not let this go no matter what you say to me.  _ I can’t. _ ”

He holds up a search warrant, signed and authorized for the Jessop house and grounds. “The house only, you collect the god damn evidence if there is any and you get your ass back here until the Marshal shows up.”

When she walks out of the conference room it starts. Joey and Staci saddle up for a ride back to Fall’s End, Nancy enlists Sharky and Grace to organize search parties and put out an APB. Jacob pushes off the wall as Ellie approaches, grabbing his hand like it’s a natural occurrence. 

“Congratulations, Mr. Seed. You’ve been deputized.”

His head snaps back to where Earl sits, still as a stone at the conference table. “What the hell did you just say?”

She whirls on him suddenly, hand falling from his like a stone. His fingers reach for hers reflexively, but as he realizes what he’s doing the hand drops. Her back hitting the door and pushing it open. “In or out, Jacob. It’s your choice, it’s always going to be your choice but I need to know now.”

The daylight catches in her hair, eyes still glazed with angry tears. Those eyes pin him where he stands and while her hand no longer reaches for him he can still feel her. And what gives her the right? This tempest, this messy creature that wouldn’t know routine and order if it kicked her squarely in the ass. How do you say ‘I need you’ without actually saying it?

The eyes. Always the eyes.

“God damn it.” 

He follows her outside.

 

* * *

 

A brand new year. New opportunities, new experiences.

Same old bullshit.

Sleet starts peppering the Bronco about halfway there, the two of them riding in tense silence. She makes it a point not to look at him at all, her entire body angled away as she drives. She wanted him to come with, didn’t she? 

And he had followed along. He couldn’t say that she forced him, it never really felt that way. Like moths to a porch light was the closest analogy his brain could summon and even then it does not seem to fit. How could he have let this happen? Some mouthy redhead with fox eyes burrowing into his skin like a tick, expanding in his brain like a damn tumor.

Worse still is that every time he so much as hesitates she steps aside to show him the emergency exit. How does she know unless she’s a runner too?

“Hey,” he tries. No response, still staring out the windshield as the engine revs and the speedometer climbs. “Ellie.”

Silence.

“Ellie,  _ look at me. _ ” Sharpness, like the edge of a knife, commands his tone. Instinctively he knows that this is not the moment to touch her, not when he can see the tension corded from her neck to her spine.

She finally spares him a passing glance, teeth worrying at her bottom lip. “I shouldn’t have brought you with. You shouldn’t be involved. What the  _ fuck  _ was I thinking?!” Her hands slam on the steering wheel.

“I went to the Crow Rez,” she confesses, eyes trained on the road. “That’s where I was over Christmas. I stayed with the Doors and I dug through anyone and everyone Lana could have had contact with.”

Jacob does not move, does not respond because he knows she isn’t done. He is not as socially-inclined as the woman sitting next to him, but that did not mean he had not learned to pick up on cues--observe behavior. The Army had taught him bits and pieces: how to observe and stalk prey, how to shoot between heart beats, how to disappear.

Watching her battle for composure should not have been as intriguing as it was, the emotions like ripples across a pond. Her brow creased, hands tightening their grip on the steering wheel. “I lied to both my families, nothing I dug up would be admissible in court and all I did find was some co-worker of hers from the strip club that said she went to these tent revivals.

“It’s a long-shot but what if this...what if it’s connected? I mean, you heard the voicemail. I just...this is going to get bad, I can feel it. Rachel’s out there alone and they’re doing God only knows what to her.”

She begins to deflate by degrees, sinking further into her seat before she takes her eyes off the road, meets his gaze. “I’m sorry. I should have left you alone after that day.”

“Why didn’t you?” He grunts, a hand settling on the ‘Oh Shit!’ handle. 

She doesn’t answer as the car slows to a halt, staring out the windshield. “We’re here.”

As they exit the car she glances to his side holster at the 1911 clipped there, a frown twisting her lips. He notices her noticing and arches a brow, “What do you want me to do?”

“Officially? You’re allowed to make citizen’s arrests. Unofficially? Anyone tries to kill us you just kill ‘em right back and I’ll handle the legal shit later.” She tosses him a half-assed grin then and he responds with one of his own as he follows her up to the front door.

The front door is not answered by an employee, but a thin wraith-like woman with glassy eyes and impossibly sharp cheekbones. Dazed and undernourished in an emerald dressing gown, manicured nails digging into the frame as she leans against it for support. “Can I help you?” A slight slur accentuating her tone.

Ellie winces, put presses forward. “Mrs. Clarice Jessop?” 

“Yes?”

Jacob watches as Ellie steps forward, booted foot in the threshold as she holds up a piece of paper. “I have a warrant to search the property, we have reason to believe your daughter was abducted from your home the evening previous. Were you and your husband or any staff home last night?”

A blank stare is all she gets in return as Clarice’s head lolls to the right, bored with the conversation. Jacob feels anger beginning to spark and can see by the cut of Ellie’s eyes that she’s not thrilled with the reaction either.

“Mrs. Jessop?” Ellie persists, voice curt and lip beginning to curl. “An answer?”

“No,” Clarice responds flatly, eyes sliding over her shoulder. “We were out. I should get Don.” She makes an attempt to shut the door and fails thanks to Ellie’s boot and her hand shooting out.

“Where is he?” Ellie pushes past her and into the entryway, Jacob following suit.

“Cellar, more than likely.” Clarice wobbles on her feet a frail arm gesturing wildly down a hallway. Jacob’s eyes follow it, eyeballing their pristine surroundings. Walls plastered with photographs and antique-looking drawings of plants. Not a single family photo in sight.

Ellie begins to head down the hallway and he notices her flip the snap on her gun. “Wait here with Mrs. Jessop, I’ll go get him.”

And Mrs. Jessop cares not a whit, leaning against the wall, looking him up and down. “What the hell happened to your face?”

He doesn’t answer, staring down the hallway.  _ Christ, she’s right. It does feel like The Shining.  _ Clarice and Jacob stand (or in her case sway) in silence until he hears a muted crash. He does not even entertain the possibility that Clarice might even attempt to run, she’s too medicated. Flying down the hallway to see a door ajar he goes through it, booted feet hitting wood steps. 

He sees a man bleeding at the bottom, a haze of red falling over his vision.  _ Ellie.  _ Skipping the last few steps he surges forward, hauling Don Jessop up by his throat. “Where. Is. She?” His grip is too tight and there is a part of him that very much likes watching this man kick and flail like a fish out of water. A little more pressure and he could watch the light fade from his eyes.

“Jacob. JACOB!” A hand tugs at his arm and he nearly all of that murderous intent is nearly turned on her, eyes cataloging the bloody gash on her forehead and the blood on her mouth. Seeing her upright should calm him, but it doesn’t. Not until she hands him the cuffs.

“He surprised me when I was heading down. Make sure he doesn’t go anywhere.” She sniffs, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. “There’s something down here he doesn’t want us to see.”

She’s moving away before he can protest and he spins the gasping man, slamming him face-first into the wall as the cuffs click and bite into his wrists. “You move again and I’ll show you what your insides look like.”

Silence, silence. Save for the wretched Jessop patriarch’s labored breathing. That homicidal veil slowly clears itself from his vision and now it’s just anxiety that stabs at him now. What the fuck was happening in Hope County? How had he not noticed the malignance?  _ You isolated yourself, you dumb fuck. How the hell would you notice if you were too busy avoiding everything. _

Ellie strides back in, bloody teeth bared. “Stand him up. Follow me.”

_ Fuck.  _ Dragging Don to his feet he pushes him forward, feet scraping on the concrete floor. Following the shadowy outline of Ellie’s figure into the darkness he opens his mouth to ask if they’re going to just kill him and bury him in his own cellar when she flips on the light.

Jacob sucks in a breath and swiftly finds himself imagining a scenario in which Donald Jessop is dying a slow, slow death. Ellie inhales sharply and slowly turns, hand on her gun. “Mr. Donald Jessop you are under arrest…” She drones on about the charges but Jacob does not hear her, stuck in his own head, in his own memories about the bite of a belt and the sound of his father’s knuckles cracking as they made contact with his skin.

Ellie for her part, adopts a mask of professionalism as she kicks him up the stairs and out of the house. Jacob opens the passenger side door as Ellie yanks the grill over and kicks him into the Bronco, nearly slamming the door on his ankle.

“Stay out here. I have to...I have to go through the rest of the house. Use the radio and let Nancy know to get the cell ready.”

She staggers away in a haze, Clarice Jessop watching the proceedings from where she stands next to the door, a Virginia Slim perched between shaking fingers.   
  


* * *

 

 

Arriving back at the station with both Jessops in the back of the Bronc spares them more than just a passing glance. Bad gas travels fast in a small town and Ellie wonders if it’s Nancy’s tendency to be loose-lipped on the CB that is responsible for the gathering crowd.

Whitehorse is standing outside with Joey and Staci as they park, grim-faced and solemn as they remove Donald from the car. Clarice follows, worrying at her fur coat and muttering something about how it was embarrassing to be seen in public wearing her house shoes. Jacob helps Whitehorse and Ellie carry the boxes of evidence into the station, surprised when he glances at the clock and discovers they have been gone for six hours.

“He won’t say anything without his lawyer and he’s not answering his phone. Claims he has some big shot out of Missoula.” Joey is talking to Earl who is currently staring off into the distance, gut full of stale coffee just churning away as the beginnings of wicked heartburn start to crackle.

Staci’s sneering from his desk, arms crossed. “Great! Maybe he can catch a ride with that Marshal.”

Everyone is talking loud enough to carry on the pretense that they don’t hear Ellie vomiting loudly in the bathroom, Jacob acting as a doorstop to block them out or cage her in, he can’t be sure.

“I can drive you to the clinic, Whitehorse  _ insists  _ you be checked out. You could have a concussion.” He’s quiet, keeps his tone at an even rumble as she braces her head on her forearms over the toilet. She very well could have a concussion, but they both know that is not the only reason for the stomach pyrotechnics.

Ellie groans, rocking back on her heels. “He’s sending me home  _ again.  _ I can’t, there’s a search party going out for Rachel in a few hours. All that god damn paperwork. Maybe that piece of shit will do the world a favor and hang himself in his cell waiting for his fucking lawyer.” She doesn’t mean it, but she says it anyway because it feels good to vent a little bit of the darkness that is starting to build like a storm cloud within her. If he’s dead how is she going to dredge information out of him?

“I’m going with you. Every time you’re left to your own devices you nearly get killed or wind up bleeding.” She glances behind her, shooting him a glare as he holds his hands up. “Friendly observation.”

“Well maybe  _ someone  _ should note that  _ someone  _ is always with me when these events occur.  _ Friendly observation. _ ” She is trying to keep up the devil-may-care rapport, but she’s fading fast and he can see her composure slowly disintegrating; they have to get out of here before the meltdown finally happens--something tells him she wouldn’t want the rest to see her that way and probably not him either.

Sadly she doesn’t have a choice.

“Staci said he’s going to call you first thing if they turn anything up tonight on the search party. Joey’s going through the evidence you boxed up. Nancy said something about Pastor Jerome mentioning an oddball that’s been coming to the church and he’s going to try and get a name.

“We can’t do anything more, not until that Marshal shows up. Let’s get the fuck out of here, I’ll grab a garbage can on the way out for you to puke in.”   
  


* * *

 

 

Rachel comes to on a hard bed with scratchy linen sheets with a black cross she does not recognize. Clutching her throbbing skull it takes her a moment to process her surroundings, the stark white flowers on the floor and the thin blonde woman perched on the edge of her bed.

“I thought you were never going to wake up!” Her voice is thin, reedy even. Leaning close enough to Rachel’s face that she can count the freckles that spray across her nose and cheekbones. “It gets so lonely waiting here for the Father all by myself.”

_ The Father.  _ The title stirs a memory, scarred skin and yellow sunglasses but that can’t be right, can it? Hands touching her. Inspecting her. Lifting her chin to meet his odd, odd eyes. Questions she doesn’t remember the answers to and a terror that she feels in the very marrow of her bones. Her roommate does not seem to share her concerns as she rises from the bed, walking toward the door she speaks through the slot to someone Rachel cannot see.

“Tell him Faith said she’s awake. Finally.”

She pirouettes then, crossing the floor in a few quick strides she grips Rachel by the shoulders and leans in close to whisper in her ear. “You can call me Selena when they aren’t around. Be careful when you talk to the Father. He can always tell when you’re lying.” 

Rachel blinks once, twice and swallows hard as her eyes search for a way out, a weapon. There’s nothing but a vase with the strange white blooms that her muzzy brain recognizes but cannot name. She hears the squeak of door hinges and her heart begins to hammer in her chest, and in her blind panic she clutches at the scratchy sheets like a child hoping to hide from some bogeyman. 

A single slim figure in a white linen shirt enters the room and his presence is...enormous. It expands to fill the room, the intensity of his stare making it hard to focus or form a coherent thought other than that she was afraid. 

“Why are you afraid?” His question echoes her thoughts and she starts. “I won’t hurt you, Rachel. We’ve been friends for a long time. Don’t you remember?”

“N-No I…” It’s not exactly a lie, is it? She does not remember the specifics of where they met or how, just that he is  _ familiar.  _ And that she is  _ terrified.  _

A small smile etches itself on his mouth, drawing up the corners of his bearded face. “I think I can help you remember. It is time for that curtain to be lifted so that you may walk the Path unhindered. It’s time, Rachel.”

Before she can question or protest his palm flattens, a small pound of powder heaped on it. A cloud of it is blown into her face and as her eyes roll up into her head she thinks she sees Selena in the background, wringing trembling hands.

Flowers crawl from the walls, a verdant green overtakes her vision. Lilies grow around her feet and when she looks up? Selena is there, holding the Father’s left hand. His right reaches out for her, a serene expression on his face.

“It’s time to wake up, Rachel. Would you like that?”

“I...yes.” She answers dazedly, trying to ignore the sick feeling in her stomach.

“Take my hand and I will show you why I have brought you here, why you are so important to Eden.”

He is beatific, everything around her is beautiful, but she can see horror in her peripherals. Pinpricks of suffering. What is reality? What is she? She isn’t even sure anymore. What Joseph shows her and what it means she is not sure. Graves, a baby in an incubator, the twisted wreckage of a car with sunflowers growing from the rusted hull. His hold on her hand grows tighter, drawing her close as he lets Selena spin away.

“You were always meant to be mine. Her soul...I’ve been looking for it, asking the Lord to guide me to her because I have  _ felt  _ her here in this valley of all places. The cradle for our new civilization. I thought that I had found it several times...found her several times.

“But now I’m sure. I’ve found her at last.”

The look of adoration on his face. Why was he looking at her like that? Selena’s standing on a precipice, wistful as she balances on one foot. “Careful! Faith!” Rachel calls out, trying to move past him to pull her down but his grip is like a vise. 

“That’s not Faith,” Joseph murmurs as he pushes back a lock of her hair. “She’s not Faith. You are. You will be.”   
  


* * *

 

 

When they finally make it back to her place the sun is setting.

And that’s when it happens.

Tears track down her cheeks faster than she can scrub them away, running alone the cut in her lip and dripping down her neck. She panics, scrabbling for the door handle so she can eject herself out of the car and hide somewhere quiet in the house. With her truck in park he flips up the center console and leans toward her, strong hands dragging her to him as she kicks out and resists.

Her protests are wordless, the low animal keening that escapes her mouth isn’t a sound he’s ever heard before and never wants to hear again. Her hands tear at his arms, body jerking because she does not fall apart--she does not put on such overt displays of vulnerability in front of other people. Jacob gathers her to his chest and holds her until she stops flailing and the wretched noise of her sobs fill the cab of the truck.

When her sobs fade to hiccups the hand that has been absentmindedly stroking her hair ceases its movement. “I’m staying here tonight.”

“I...don’t...need a babysitter.” Her voice is muffled from where her face is pressed into his now-damp jacket.

He chuckles, head leaning back against the cold glass of the driver’s side window. “That’s not what the Doc and everyone else that knows you said. But I also thought that maybe you might not want to be alone.”

“Have you been possessed? Are you ill?” A hand ascends to press itself against his forehead. She sighs finally, hand dropping. “You’re right though. I don’t. Want to be alone.”

She pulls away from him then, wiping her face. “No more wisecracks about my house, okay? She’s sensitive.”

 

* * *

 

He cooks dinner while she showers, making a mental note to sneak in a can of WD-40 and his tool belt the next time he found himself here. The creak of the stairs announces her approach, wet hair soaking a black Johnny Cash t-shirt that has definitely seen better days. 

“You know how to cook? Thought you just lived off of MREs.”

“Enough of the wisecracks. Eat your dinner, with your mouth closed preferably.”

They eat the soup and sandwiches in companionable silence before she points him upstairs. “There’s a towel and sweats up there. I stole ‘em from my brother.” 

And here in this odd domestic bubble she finds herself hanging up their jackets, washing the dishes without really paying much attention. Flicking water from her hands she moves to the living room that is still a mess from the night previous. She fixes the couch cushions, throws the blankets on the couch and flips on the T.V. turning on some mindless Netflix show before burrowing into one corner of the couch.

When Jacob returns he nearly misses her, cocooned in her blankets. She turns to look up at him, surprised to find him shirtless. She looks at him. He lets her. Scars and tattoos marble his chest, shrapnel and gunshot wounds and bruises. A patchwork of damage and mistakes that a part of him had always felt self-conscious about, a physical brand that proclaims him a monster. Damaged goods.

She pats the couch, teeth worrying at her lower lip as the cushions sag under his weight.

Sitting up against the armrest she groans, rolling her neck. “I can answer your question now.” 

His legs rest against hers, eyes flicking to the television before meeting her gaze. “Hmm?”

“Why I didn’t leave you alone when I should have.”

He says nothing, a hand closing around her foot, waiting for the answer and attempting to be nonchalant to quell the anxiety rising in his chest. Runners run, it’s ingrained in their DNA just as hunting, running, killing is in Friday’s. What happens when you go against your nature?

“Even though we’ve never met before...I recognized you. My father always used to say that kind recognizes kind and I’ve never--I don’t put a lot of stock in what he had to say but in this instance I thought that maybe he was finally right.

“I mean, I see who you  _ think  _ you are and then how it translates...it’s different. You aren’t whatever it is you think you are. Your past, your demons. I know it doesn’t make sense, but I knew I could trust you. I  _ knew  _ you were important.”

His hand falls away from her foot, trying to process her words. A calloused hand dragging itself over his face, through his beard. Amber eyes peek at him from the safety of her blanket, foot jiggling against his thigh.

“Stop thinking so loud, god damn it.”

She sits up, crawls toward him ever so carefully. Burrowing into his side she closes her eyes, face pressed into the side of his neck. “You can get out any time, y’know. I won’t stop you from leaving, I’ll never stop you. This ain’t the Hotel California.”

“I’m not sure if you know this, but not everyone is like you where they say everything they’re thinking as they think it.” He grouses, frozen by the forwardness. “You just...you act like everything you do is natural. Do you even think about the consequences?” His arm closes around her, holding her to his side as she tries to wriggle away from him.

“You go out into the woods with a stranger on faith? You head down a hallway in a spooky fucking house to  _ look at a cellar alone?  _ You  _ made  _ me dance with you.”

She starts to laugh at that. “Oh, and that was so terrible?”

“Nothing I’ve done since I met you is the norm for me.”

She props herself up, their faces agonizingly close. “Would it make you feel better if I said ‘ditto?’ I don’t normally run off with strange men into the woods, but I do...dive into things headfirst. I wasn’t always that way.”

“I don’t believe you.” 

She takes his hand then, guiding it beneath her shirt and he starts to protest until he feels it. Feels them. Thick bands of scar tissue running across her skin and there are...so many. His eyes widen slightly, finger tips worrying at the flesh beneath his finger tips.

“You told me one of your stories, now I’ll tell you one of mine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♫ In The Woods Somewhere by Hozier
> 
> Lotsa shit happening in this chapter. A lot of messy spiderweb connections, a lot of screwed up stuff. Jacob coming to terms with the fact that he might like Ellie? There's a lot going on man. A lot. And who tf is Joab? Are you guys sufficiently weirded out yet?


	9. wrap the night around your shoulders

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ WARNING: Murder, vague mentions of mutilation, abuse of a minor. ]

**OGDEN, UTAH 1996**

It is so quiet, even the sound of the waterfall hitting the rocks seems muted. She’s close enough that the mist kisses her skin, caught in the warm morning breeze that drifts through the trees and stirs the dust and the dirt in the canyon. She should be sweating instead of shivering, eyes rolling in her head like that of a frightened doe. She should be laughing and playing in the water, balancing on the rocks that line the shore of the little river that winds down and through Ogden like a serpent.

Her right hand claws at the dirt, a whimper caught like a burr in her throat. She cannot pull herself up, young body weighted down with invisible blocks of concrete and it  _ hurts, hurts, hurts.  _ A dry tongue runs over her cracked lips, trying to bring the world into focus. Everything is stained crimson, she has been systematically torn to shreds and abandoned and  _ perhaps it won’t be long now. _

She has no idea how long she’s been lying there, only that she recognizes the glimpses of scenery around her as Waterfall Canyon, a place where they used to picnic. The rocks and sand are now stained a dark, violent red and it’s her red, isn’t it? Worse than the fear of something so permanent as death is the fear of what her brothers will think, of what Aunt Janet will think. What if Mama finds her way back some day and she isn’t there?

_ Mama isn’t coming back!  _ If she could cry she might have done, sucking in choking gasps of air. Her young mind is still sharp for its age, able to draw connections that might have even missed her older brother’s notice. In spite of all this her mind still scrambled to compute what had happened and  _ why _ it happened the way it did.

She can still hear the feverish whispering above her, paralyzed by whatever had been in that needle. Willing her legs to kick out, her arms to lift themselves to swing at him--all to no avail. She can only watch with wide, terrified eyes as he hovers over her. “Shhh, shhh. I love you, I love you, but this is your lesson.” When he made the first cut she could feel it, feel the drag of the knife as it dug through skin and into the tissue beneath until she lost consciousness, his warm tears falling on her bloodied skin.

Ellie does not remember being discovered; the hikers responsible for saving her life would later visit her in her hospital room lined with a few vases of flowers and stuffed animals. They would tell her that they had hiked out with the intention to picnic with their dogs when their labrador, Rocky, took off like a shot and inevitably led them to her.

She cannot decide if what they did was a blessing or a curse.

“You’re quite the fighter, little girl.” Her nurse is a heavier set woman with a kind, open face that never creases in anger even as Ellie turns to look away and refuses to acknowledge her presence. She had heard them talking in the hall to Aunt Janet, the sad and stilted words of people who were caught between rage and sympathy. Ellie had watched the police officers stationed outside her room and  had noticed the looks they kept exchanging between one another every time one of them looked in on her.

She is eleven-years-old.

By the time she leaves the hospital she feels so much older and so far away.

 

* * *

 

They caught up to him three days later, calmly seated in his car at a rest stop. ‘Only You’ by The Platters drifts through the speakers as the car is effectively surrounded by state police. All with their guns drawn, all praying that he might make a wrong move so he might become the human equivalent of Swiss cheese. The sentiment only intensifies when they find another body in his trunk and as they take him away and he’s smiling all the while.

“How’s my girl doing?” He hazards to ask the officers tasked with bringing him in to the station, relaxed in spite of the cuffs biting into his wrists.

One of them opens their mouth, lips curled into an odd hybrid between visible disdain and a snarl. They do not talk to him the entire ride back, but he talks to them. Relays how the latest girl had come on to him at a truck stop, eyeliner smudged and lip gloss too garish to be worn by a ‘good girl.’ How she had sobbed and pleaded and cried for her parents, how in the end her death mask was one of relief that her time on the tedious mortal coil had been finished. How he had finished it for her. How it was mercy.

When he’s through with his tale he asks about her again, leaning so close to the grill that the officer sitting shotgun finally growls at him to lean back. They promptly go back to ignoring him and he leans back in his seat and watches the highway rise to meet them.

“If I wanted to kill her, I could have. I had to teach her a lesson: you can’t lie about what you are. Who you are. Kind recognizes kind.”

The silence stretches.

“I  _ love  _ my daughter.”

 

* * *

 

Before he was known as the Ogden Butcher Ellis Nystrand was a well-liked man in his community, proud owner of the local hardware store, active parent within the schools, always there to lend a helping hand to his friends and neighbors. With the mountains standing as silent sentinels on this postcard-worthy town it would later be revealed that he was responsible for unthinkable atrocities--all committed with the same friendly smile he greeted his customers with.

Every parent assures their children that they could not possibly have a favorite child, but being as that she was the only girl and far more challenging than her brothers, it seemed that she was his. Eric was already grown and preparing to fly the coop on a promising football scholarship and Tommy was just finishing third grade. They all had a routine, a strict set of rules to follow, but they were all happy for the most part.

“My best girl,” her father would often say as he carefully wove her hair into braids.

“Your only girl.”

He would only chuckle at the reminder before gently pushing her off to breakfast. 

Eleanor held the dreaded position of middle child in their family of four. Their mother having ran off when she was all but four she never really had a feminine influence to speak of, and she never seemed to mind it as long as Aunt Janet kept up her bi-monthly visits from Salt Lake to see how the family was getting on. 

Everything was fine. Until it wasn’t.

There were clues, Ellie would later realize as she sat in stunned silence during her first semester of psych class. He always held her hand just a little too tightly, never allowed them to have a pet even though she had begged and pleaded. Whenever she did attempt to bring strays home they always...disappeared. He would often depart on long, mysterious weekends away that he always referred to as ‘hunting trips’ that were somehow different than the ones he often took Ellie on.

She would beg him to take her with, thinking that it was some terribly exciting adventure that she was missing out on when nothing could be further from the truth. When her father finally relented she would realize that he mistook her enthusiasm for hunting animals for something else entirely. Ellie thought nothing of the black duffel bag her father placed in the trunk of the family car, and everything that happened after?

To this day she preferred not to speak of it.

 

* * *

 

The FBI raided the house, her brothers spirited away by their Aunt to avoid the media backlash. Her father disclosed three locations, three bodies right away just to whet the appetites of the true crime junkies and their ilk. His face was splashed across every tabloid and in spite of the tight circle of adults attempting to shield Ellie from the press, a few of hers made it into more unscrupulous tabloids.

_ THE OGDEN BUTCHER’S DAUGHTER USED AS BAIT. UTAH TOWN REELING AT MONSTER IN THEIR MIDST. BUTCHER’S DAUGHTER ONLY KNOWN LIVING VICTIM.  _

As soon as Ellie was able to be moved they spirited her away. Changed their last names to mirror their mother’s maiden name and attempted to rebuild from the rubble. Ellis would never allow them to completely forget about him, however, and every year on Eleanor’s birthday she would have to look at him across that table. He would always attempt pleasantries and small talk, always try to touch her and frown a little when she leaned farther out of reach. Eventually he would give up, close his eyes and give her a name and a location and sometimes he would describe the things he’d done just to watch the expressions change on her face until finally she learned to cage the horror, conceal the rage. Until finally she gave him nothing.

So much of her adult life had been penance for the sins of her father, from her choice to go into law enforcement in spite of the fact that most of her instructors and classmates eventually found out. They did not exactly blame her so much as shy away, like she had some sort of disease they were desperate not to catch. All those young girls, young women...their ghosts were a parade at her back, reconstructed faces and family pictures emblazoned in stark relief across her mind’s eye.

Eventually when the opportunity to transfer out of Utah arose she jumped at a chance to go where folks might not know her name and the stories that swirled around it whenever the press got desperate.

 

* * *

 

**HOPE COUNTY, MONTANA 2014**

“For a long time I thought that maybe my mother’s name would show up among his trophies,” Ellie mutters as she extricates herself from Jacob who seems too stunned to stop her. “Once the story broke and everyone knew what he was they investigated, but they claim they never found her--alive or dead.”

His hand leaves her skin and she retreats back to the other side of the couch, features pinched as she pulls her legs up until her chin rests on her knee cap. “I spent a lot of my life being angry, I was just...it was like I didn’t have room for anything else and coming here? I could be something else, something more like me. I can breathe here. Or I could.”

Words form and die on his tongue as he processes. What was there to say, really? Does he nod sagely and pretend to understand  _ that  _ particular realm of pain and suffering? To be betrayed by a parental figure meant to protect you? He understood it to a point, but his own father’s brutality could have never compared.  _ Remember what you did to Miller?  _ His stomach churns and he shudders involuntarily, hands curling into fists.

“I told you because...I felt like,” she pauses, jaw working before she corrects herself, “I  _ feel  _ like out of all the people here, you might...understand.”

His eyes open slowly, inhaling deeply through his nose before the breath is purged in a heavy sigh that precludes an acknowledgment at last.

“I do understand.”

“I sense a ‘but’ coming.”

“ _ But  _ making amends by risking your life unnecessarily? You can’t just rush headlong into the abyss every time, Ellie. One day you’re not going to make it back out.” And that thought, even the faintest imagining of such a prospect, was troublesome. Jacob had met so many people over the years that could fit the bill for a hero--genuinely decent, hard-working men and women that would give the shirt off their backs, give their very lives to save other people.

They were gone, and men like him remained.

Ellie disagreed as predicted, her face scrunching. “For so long I have lived with this fear that I am going to turn out just like him, just like he wanted me to. My father thought he loved me so much that he could make me just like him, that I had the same...disease burrowed into my DNA.”

“Ellie, that’s no--” She holds up a hand to silence him.

“I see them all, Jacob. Every single day they are there, watching me. They disappeared and people failed to notice until it was too late. You saw what was in that basement, what Rachel’s father did to her. Someone has to go into the dark to get her out, get her back from whoever took her.”

_ Why does it have to be you?  _ The question goes unasked, the answer already lingering there in the fringes. It was who she was. Motivated by the near-rabid desire to prove that she was better, that she was normal. Instinctively he knew that there would be no stopping her, that she would bulldoze straight into the heart of darkness and devoid of choice he would have to stand with her.

_ You don’t have to. You want to.  _

“Look, Jacob...you have made this clear that this is a lot for you and I didn’t mean to just attach myself to you like a barnacle. I just need you to do one thing for me. Just one. Just look out for them? For Joey, for Stace, Nancy, Earl…”

“Now wait a minute. This is not a reading of your will, is it?” He straightens, leaning forward as a scarred hand reaches out and touches her knee. “Ellie, what the hell do you think is going to happen?”

She peers up at him from beneath the fringe of her lashes, jaw working. “That’s just it, I don’t know. I just feel like it’s going to get bad before it gets better, even with that Marshal coming. Look, maybe you should get back. I swear I’m fine.”

“No,” he answers flatly. “I’m staying here.”  _ And I don’t want to think about why that is, but you’re going to ask me anyway. _

But she surprises him by not chasing after it. Opting instead to cover his hand with her own, squeezing gently, head tilted to study the expression on his face. “Lack of normal still bothering you?”

“I think I’ll live as long as you quit tryin’ to get me to leave.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been a long time since I have updated. A lot of things started to roll into motion all at once mid-September which culminated into a trip to Ireland (which was great) but when I got back I had a few deaths in the family (not so great.) I have not felt like myself lately, but I do want to get back into writing. I know this chapter wasn't the longest but I'm going to try and ease back into it because the story is still playing on the reels inside my head. Thanks to all those that have read, bookmarked, commented, kudos'd. I appreciate you and it definitely helps.


	10. run (for your life)

The entirety of Hope County failed to impress the Marshal, up at the asscrack of dawn brushing his teeth and ignoring the tingle of aftershave. With only three hours of sleep under his belt he knew that everything that might transpire today would require every iota of energy he had--and then some. 

_ Doesn’t matter, I got this.  _ He stares hard at his reflection in the mirror, sees the dark circles beneath his eyes that will no doubt betray him if anyone here is schooled enough to take a closer look. A brief swell of superiority rising like a plume of smoke as he calms himself with the notion that these country bumpkins haven’t the foggiest idea of how to do their jobs properly.

Of course they would probably see him as a soft city boy, manicured appearance and shined boots. How were they to know what he had sacrificed to get himself here? The long hours, the marriage that was slipping through his hands like quicksand--the divorce filing left hanging out of its envelope on the bed of his hotel room back home.

_ “‘Cameron, this is your baby. Don’t screw the pooch on this one, understand? The local PD out there is on a need-to-know basis, there’s a lot of eyes on this. Proceed with caution and I want timely updates, understand?’” _

Replaying the conversation as he wipes the remnants of toothpaste froth from the edges of his mouth he turns to peer out the frost-smudged window, the manila folder and its contents pulled into his hand. Sheathes of paper are carefully withdrawn and stacked on the table, pulling on his shirt and inspecting his sidearm he sets it down with a heavy thunk as eyes skip over the pages.  _ Project at Eden’s Gate. Known Alias(es): John Duncan. Known Alias(es): Joseph Duncan. Known Alias(es): Joab Duncan. Doomsday cult. Kidnapping. Murder. Terrorism. _

“They won’t know what hit ‘em.”

When he finally departs the motel the receptionist is quick to bid him a safe visit, waiting until the doors shut behind him to snatch up the phone.

“Father? He just left. Yes, yes. We are ready and waiting for the signal.”

* * *

 

“Thank you, my child.”

Peering out across Silver Lake as a slender finger taps to end the call, phone lowering from his ear. Joseph watches the first rays of sunlight crest over the snow-capped mountains in the distance, inhaling the sharp winter air. With his back to the woods he could not see the chainlink fence and barbed wire that peeked through the bare branches of the slumbering trees.

All was quiet, all was peaceful.

It would not always be this way--all this wintry beauty would be washed away in a blast. Someday soon the snow would turn to ash, the lakes would dry and the fish would die. He had seen it, the End, and though he fancied himself a gifted wordsmith there was no poetry in the death of the world. 

There could only be purification.

Footsteps crunching through the snow pricked at his ears and yet he still did not turn, face schooled into a serene mask. “How is our sister, Josiah?”

“She yet sleeps father, the other F--I mean, the pretender is awake. We had to restrain her and gag her, she uh...she keeps trying to hurt herself.”

He turns slowly, fixing the other man with a calculating stare. Joseph is not troubled by this information, but he can see the disquiet in the other and he claps a hand on the man’s shoulder to offer him succor. “Proof, you see? She was a pretender. We have found our true Faith, she is almost ready. Have the others prepare her, I’ll be along shortly--one more call to make.”

Watching the man’s retreating back for a moment before he glances down at the phone in his hand. It only rings once before Joab’s deep baritone resounds on the other end of the line.

“Brother? Is it time?”

“Yes, Joab. Complete your task and send your chosen to the compound when it’s done.”

“I would be more at ease if I were by your side, Joseph.”

“Do not worry yourself, Joab. He will not let them take me away from you or the others.”

“Understood.”

The line goes dead and shortly thereafter the Veteran’s Center goes dark. Orderlies and doctors and maintenance are all either among their number already or dead in the courtyard. Culled from the herd in a clean, surgical strike.

“We have a busy day ahead of us,” Joseph murmurs as he carefully navigates away from the rocky shoreline. “A busy day indeed.”

* * *

“My God, his jeans are tighter than yours, Staci.”

“Shut up! My jeans aren’t  _ that  _ tight.”

“Your mouth says no, but your jeans are one giant belt buckle away from screaming ‘bronc riders can do it in eight seconds!’”

Joey and Staci’s bickering is the first thing to greet Ellie’s ears as she blows into the station with Jacob in tow, stomping snow from her boots and carefully avoiding the probing look her coworkers fix her with. 

“Any luck with the search party?” Jacob pipes up behind her, blue eyes dragged to the window of Whitehorse’s office and the man standing within.

Joey shakes her head. “Dogs caught a trail, but we hit a dead end at Lorna’s. Cell phone’s a no-go. Her mother was in a stupor, dad’s in jail. No one saw anything becau--”

“Because everybody was in town,” Ellie finished, bitterness enveloping her tone, “getting drunk.”

“Don’t start, you  _ know  _ that we wouldn’t have made it to her in time.” Nancy appears at her elbow, brandishing her Wonder Woman mug.”Besides, we have the Marshal here now. He’ll help us get this sorted out, he has  _ resources.” _

Ellie finally turns her attention to the Marshal’s turned back, looking beyond him to Earl’s face and the thoroughly annoyed expression embedded into the wrinkles by his eyes.  _ Yeah, resources my ass.  _ “How long has he been in there and is he planning on sharing with the rest of the class?”

Staci, still smarting from Joey’s comment, shrugs and folds his arms over his chest. “A little over an hour, gave all of us the brush off when he came in--acted like we should be kissin’ his ass clear to where it’s brown.”

_ Figures.  _ It always dissolves into a turf war when a different department, hell a different branch gets involved. Ellie had fought another war just yesterday--yes, she had fallen asleep eventually the night previous--playing a waiting game to see who would fall asleep first: her or Jacob. Until her eyes had slipped closed her mind’s eye had been playing a highlight reel of everything that had transpired thus far and had found him or the thought of him in nearly every strip of blood-splashed film.

Friends? Allies? Had they indeed bonded over shared trauma?  _ Still can’t believe you told him,  _ harangued by her subconscious, a creature that preferred to horde its wounds and idiosyncrasies in private.  _ I had to tell him, he wouldn’t have understood otherwise. I wanted to tell him.  _

He touches her elbow, lips parted as though about to speak, but they’re interrupted by the office door swinging open.

“All right, team meeting.” The statement is met with silence as the words are Burke’s and not Whitehorse's--everyone staring, unimpressed.

Whitehorse shook his head, pushing down the urge to roll his eyes. “C’mon now  _ children _ , we’ve got our work cut out for us.”

The Marshal’s attention turns to Jacob, noting the lack of uniform, the scars creeping over his face and Cameron feels his lip curl just enough that the redhead notices. “Essential personnel only.”

A stand-still again, Jacob’s eyes turning steely before Ellie interjects. “Fine, we all want the same thing right? Get Rachel back safe and sound. Excuse us a moment.”

When the door is shut behind them and the cold winter wind is sneaking down the collar of their jackets Jacob glares at the door, turning his attention to Ellie. “I don’t like him.”

“I don’t either,” she sighs, trying not to let her own dread seep into her words. “But this is what we have to work with. Can you get Dutch or Jess to come get you?”

“Yeah, I’ll give ‘em a call. Just, uh...just be careful out there where ever you end up.” His hand rubs at the back of his neck, gruff words doing little to disguise the concern within them. “You get into trouble out there you just leave that Marshal in whatever mess he’s bound to drag y’into.”

He’s only half-joking.

Ellie gives him a wan smile, a brow arched before she gives him a playful jab to his uninjured shoulder. “I’ll hail you when we get back, all right? Since I know you’ll be counting the hours.”

The noise he makes is something between a snort and a laugh before he walks off toward the gas station to appropriate the telephone.

* * *

“Okay, boys and girls, your evidence was submitted and they saw fit to send me here to help you out. We have had our eye on the goings-on here in Hope County and we have identified a person of interest that we believe may very well be responsible for Rachel Jessop’s abduction.

“Joseph and John Duncan, brothers and the owner-operators of Project at Eden’s Gate. They’ve been buying up land across Hope County, their uh...sermons made their way to the web, we had someone embedded with their outfit, but it’s been three months with no contact.”

Joey’s face ripples, morphing into a grim mask of rage for all to see. “So, you mean to tell me tha--” she cuts herself off, an angry smirk affixed to her mouth, “--you mean to tell me that there was something awry here this whole time and you  _ knew.  _ You knew and you just...did nothing?”

Five sets of eyes are focused on Burke now and he can feel the intensity of their dislike burning holes right through him. “We didn’t have actionable intel until...hang on, just let me show you.”

Shot and broadcast from a hidden camera, the bodies shift and mill but it becomes apparent they are witnessing a baptism of some sort. A man sporting tattoos and yellow aviators is shirtless and waist deep in the frigid fall water of the lake with a woman dressed in white. Everyone stands at rapt attention, answering the priest’s sermon with a reverence that was distinctly...off-putting. Another scene, a man getting his eyes gouged out.

It takes a moment but suddenly Ellie’s brain catches up and the alarm bells start to ring.

“Wait! Go back to the baptism and pause.” Ellie’s eyes are caught on the screen, her pulse pounding in her ears.

“There. See that?” Her finger lingers just millimeters away from the screen. “That is Lana Door.”

Another puzzle piece falls into place, the trail is back--if this bastard was responsible for Lana’s death and he had Rachel? They watch the rest of the video in tense silence, but Ellie just replays Lana’s face over and over again. And beyond that there were still echoes of conversation with her parents, with the people who knew her.

“‘Why are you here?’”

“‘We don’t need your apologies, we need you to do your fucking job.’”

_ I am. I’m going to. I will. _

* * *

“Deputy Fox?” 

Ellie’s gaze slides to the Marshal as they follow Earl, Joey, and Staci on the snow-blown roads, her grip tight on the steering wheel.

“Listen, I’m sorry--I know I came off as a jackass back there, I went into this believing that you guys were going to be…”

“Assholes?” Ellie supplied, a smirk edging in. 

“Well, I was going to say ‘difficult’ but yeah. I guess I kind of unwittingly stomped into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Wasn’t professional.”

“It’s not like we made it easy on you. We’re all just frustrated--want to see justice served. I, uh...Lana’s death has really…I just want to do right by her. Her family. The cloak and dagger shit isn’t really something we deal with out here.”

“Well, from what I heard you’ve had a hell of a time. Gettin’ shot at in the woods, Rachel’s father...despicable.” Venom drips from his mouth and is it so wrong that she’s starting to feel at ease?

“He’s got money and connections, it will be hard to get him prosecuted to the fullest extent, but I’m going to do my damnedest. His lawyer’s supposed to show up today.”

“When we get Joseph back to the jail, might be useful to do a little drive-by and see if they know each other,” Cameron muses aloud, studying the landscape out of the passenger side window.

“That’s not a bad idea.”

“Hey, who was the redhead?” Those scars, that face.

“He’s the guy that found Lana, he has been consulting for the department. Name’s Jacob Seed. He’s a good guy, a little...intense, but I trust him. One of those completely off-the-grid cabin-in-the-woods types.”

Cameron’s eyes widen a fraction, but he keeps his head turned away in the hopes she doesn’t see it.  _ Seed? That can’t be a coincidence.  _

“So, now that we’ve kissed and made up I’ll pass the note on to the others and maybe we can make the most of this shitstorm, right Marshal?”

“You can call me Cameron.”

* * *

A primal fear begins to settle in as the barbed wire fences swim into view--the sense that dozens of eyes are watching them as they take their sweet-ass time driving to the compound. They had departed as hunters and now? Eleanor was getting the distinct impression that the script had been completely flipped, and judging by Cameron’s face he was starting to get an inkling of it too.

“This place is goddamn spooky. You guys never wondered what he was doing out here?”

Ellie chews on the inside of her cheek, unsure of the answer herself. They had rarely had run-ins with the Duncans and their ilk, owing it to the assumption that they were nothing but harmless hippies. A batch of misfits so like and unlike the citizens that dotted the county--veterans, ranchers, preppers, truckers, drifters, artists. 

Perhaps the West remained wild in a different way, through the odd people that dug in to her landscape. Were they just as ineffective now as the law had been back then?

“Earl has a ‘live and let live’ policy, I’d been aware of of ‘em but they were pretty careful to not make too many waves all this time. Makes y’wonder what changed.”  _ And who people are going to blame for not noticing it sooner.  _

Cameron chews on her words for a moment, the first spikes of adrenaline beginning to slither through his body like an electric current. 

“Maybe nothing did.”

Mirroring Earl’s truck ahead of them she turns right, the paved road giving way to gravel. The gate is open and there  _ are  _ people just beyond it, silent for the moment. Waiting.

The radio crackles to life, beating back the rising tension. “It ain’t too late to turn back, Marshal. Sometimes it’s best to leave well enough alone.”

Cameron and Ellie exchange a look and it’s almost as if he’s deferring to her, as if she had the right to be the deciding factor in what was clearly going to become a bloody mess.  _ They should have sent a fucking team--I’m just one fucking man with four goddamn cops.  _

“With respect, seems like that might be what got us into this mess in the first place, Sheriff.”

Ellie finds herself nodding in agreement, swallowing hard as she eyeballs the folk clinging to the fences, to the bawling dogs and the men and women with weapons in hand.  _ Jesus fuck. How did we miss this?  _

“All right, Marshal. We do this my way. Quiet, guns in holsters unless the situation deems it necessary we draw ‘em. Understood?”

They answer in the affirmative as Ellie throws the Bronco in park, opening her door to let the sound and the fury of the late afternoon air filter in. Angry voices, barking dogs, the tension had mounted to a fevered pitch and as she brought up the back of their very small pack she kept her hand hovering above the unsnapped holster that held her Glock. 

“Hope everybody remembered their bulletproof vests,” Staci snarked under his breath, eyes snagging on one bearded man standing off from the rest of the crowds. “Not that it’s gonna help us if--does that asshole have a shotgun?”

“Staci, stay with the vehicles. Let’s go.”

They’re walking toward a white clapboard church, intricately carved doors adorned with a cross Ellie could have sworn she’d seen somewhere else. Earl shouts meaningless platitudes at the mob gathered, meant to be authoritative, but it had little effect on these people. There was nothing but a blank meanness settled into the corners of their eyes.

“Hey, is that the Statie we had that quit two months ago? Joey look.” Ellie’s hushed tones are nearly lost over the din of howling dogs, but Joey’s head glides slowly to the right before dipping in a barely perceptible nod.

“Yeah,” she sighs grimly. “Name’s Brian.”

_ And we never noticed.  _ They were noticing now, words etched into the peeling white paint of the doors and the harmonious voices singing from within. Joey is told to man the doors and while it is glaringly apparent that she does not agree with her posting she does not argue with Earl in front of the Marshal. 

Earl catches Ellie's eye and jerks his head toward the doors. “Rook, with me.”

Ellie swallows and complies, shoving down her fear in favor of summoning an image of Lana. Pictures of a living girl laughing and windblown from her family’s recollection, a harsh juxtaposition over those of her floating in that icy water.

Before he pushes the door open Earl fixes them with a significant look, a silent reminder of what he’d said on the radio. Calm, quiet. Grasping onto the tendrils of anger that snake through her as she thinks of Lana’s body wrapped up in the blanket in the back of the very Bronco Joseph Duncan would be sitting in.

She clenches her jaw, throws her shoulders back and the doors open to a dimly lit chapel and the echoes of a sermon. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♫ Run From Me by Timber Timbre
> 
> Here we go. I've been going through some stuff, more of an explanation likely to come in the next chapter. You can find me and my disorganized Tumblr @ hopecountyhellcat if you want someone to yell at or throw prompts to.


	11. an author's note

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a warning, there's some heavy shit down below. Don't read if you're in a bad head space.

On January 15th I had the last dinner I was ever going to have with my mom.

She passed away unexpectedly in the early morning hours of January 16th. My fiance and I had been living with her at the time so we could save money to buy a house of our own and now? I'm doing exactly that, I'm buying a house. I just wish she could have been here to see it.

My fiance found her when he was about to leave for work after realizing her alarm was still going off and she wasn't up yet. Once he realized something was wrong he screamed for me and I remember just...I was so confused. Half-asleep stumbling up the stairs with my dogs right behind me, I remember standing at the doorway for a second, just frozen in shock as he rolled her over on her back.

I had to help him get her off the bed and onto the floor where we performed CPR while the dispatcher spoke in the background and I didn't cry. I had to stop when the EMTs called in so I could corral the dogs because I wasn't sure how Keeva and Luna would react to a bunch of strange men in the house. They walked down the hallway and shut the door. I didn't cry when I called my dad, who lives out of the country. I didn't cry when I called my grandparents who had only just lost their other daughter a few months before. 

I sat out on the deck, chain-smoking.

Forty-five minutes with the Lucas machine and they couldn't get her back.

My grandmother started screaming when they finally told us.

I didn't cry.

I walked down the hallway to say goodbye to my mom. I kissed her forehead and as my younger (half) sister got to the house we had to watch them carry her out of the house in a body bag. And then everyone looked at me, asked who was going to call my middle sister who was and is living in North Carolina. I had to listen to her inhuman screaming on speaker phone.

I have had to do...so many hard things. Write her eulogy, put together a slideshow, shuttle my sister and my dad and my step-mom to and from airports or watch them depart on road trips back to other places. I had to watch my fiance (who lost his father in a similar fashion) break down for the first time in six years. It's been a few months and people are always remarking on how 'strong and well-adjusted' I am. 

I'm not.

Since she passed without a will I have had to petition the courts to be made estate representative, I've managed to pay off most of her debts without the papers but in order to sell this house I need them. My grandfather's health has been failing steadily and on top of getting this place fixed up we found a place that could be ours if they accept our counter-offer. Yesterday I came home to a bloodbath, my two girls got into a fight for the first time in their lives. One dog has a broken tooth we'll need to get fixed and the other had to go to the emergency vet to get sutured for the wounds she sustained.

So, yeah. Life is just...one big boulder I'm trying to roll up a fucking hill right now. Honestly, I don't know what I would do if I didn't have my fiance helping me with all the phone calls and running around we've had to do.

Why am I telling you this?

I guess if I had to try and explain it there's a part in that series House on Haunted Hill or whatever the hell it's called where Michel Huisman's wife (or a spectre of her really) says he has to digest things and shit them out, that's the kind of writer he is.

That's the kind of writer I am, I guess.

The more I tried to pretend that everything was okay, the more I wasn't. All these people wanted to see me break down and I couldn't allow myself to do it. So I do it in private. In my car on a late night drive listening to Bob Seger, in my shower, at night when I'm sure no one's awake. Hell, it's still a struggle for me because all of this shit I have to do? I don't even know if I'm doing it right, I'm flying by the seat of my pants here.

My mom actually read this fanfic and while she doesn't really understand the nerdiness of it all she enjoyed it, told me that I should try to finish it and then see if I could finish an actual book some day to be published. So, this work is dedicated to her. My cheerleader, my I-just-want-you-to-do-well mother. 

I'll always be looking for you, and some day I'll find you again.


	12. death don't (have no mercy)

“Remind me why we’re doing this again?”

“Hey, I told you that you could just drop me off, but you two chose to stay and stare at me.” Jacob scoots out from under the kitchen sink, eyeballing Jess from where she stands with a can of WD-40 in hand.

“I’m not starin’, I’m just wondering why the hell we’re doing this if she didn’t ask you to, Unc.”

He had not gone home as intended, knowing full well he’d merely pace the length of his cabin several times over--haunt the radio waiting for some sign that all had gone well. Logically speaking it seemed far more prudent to stay close to town so he could witness the aftermath and attempt to shield Ellie from the outcome.

Instead of lingering in a bar or waiting at the station he had called Dutch, requesting a return to the Deputy’s house with a set of projects in mind to while away the hours until the situation resolved itself. 

“You’re worried about her, aren’t you?” Jess mutters softly, head tilted as she listens to Dutch swear as he tries to fix the porch swing chain outside.

“Hand me that basin wrench on the table, kid.”

Just another way to avoid answering a question that his adopted niece already knows the answer to.  _ Why the hell do people always do that? What’s the verbal confirmation gonna do?  _ He doesn’t notice the way Jess rolled her eyes as she sauntered over to the kitchen table they had all been gathered around one day prior. 

Slapping the wrench into his open palm she squats down to squint at his handiwork, hand waving in front of her nose to dispel the mildew stink the leaky pipe had caused. “Whatever happened at the Jessop place must’ve messed her up, huh?”

Instead of answering he leans back under the sink, jaw clenching as he tries not to let his memory carry him back to that dank little hole under the Jessop house. To those pictures, the look on Ellie’s face, the absence of shame on Don’s. His lawyer still hadn’t shown by the time the Marshal and the rest of the Sheriff’s Department had rolled out in their little makeshift convoy and the idea of Don waiting in discomfort was only a small consolation.  _ Could have just killed him. Should have just killed him. _

Somewhere in the back of his head he can hear Miller sucking his teeth, a buzzing murmur of smug accusation.  _ You haven’t changed at all, Seed. You’ll never change. _

His grip tightens on the wrench, knuckles white. As if to combat the impending storm brewing in the darker corners of his psyche flashes of Ellie begin to appear:

_ Shit-faced as she staggers up the stairs on New Year’s Eve with him right behind her, arms outstretched as if to catch her. She makes it to the top and whirls, colliding with his chest and cackles as he catches himself on the banister. “You smell like potato chips and liquor, wonder if you taste like it too.” _

_ “You gettin’ fresh with me, Deputy?” He remembers it now, the boozy memories dredged up and thrown like crumbs to a starving dog. Her lips curve, mischief in her eyes as one shoulder hitches and drops. _

_ Ellie sailing out of the bathroom followed by a cloud of steam, an undercurrent of Fireball on her breath as she hip checks him out of the way of her dresser to get him a shirt not covered in the remnants of spilled snack food. “You’re a mess--how do you find anything in that?” Gesturing to the haphazard piles of clothing. _

_ “Hey pal, don’t judge a book by its movie.” _

_ “You’re still shit-faced, aren’t you?” _

_ “Yup.” _

_ Ellie peering down at him from her perch on the bed, a comfortable silence pervading the room.  Even without uttering a word her presence is loud, drowning out Miller’s voice and the sharp reports of gunfire that usually accompany it. Mutes the howling of the wolves. _

He relaxes his grip on the wrench, a frustrated sigh leaving his mouth in a hiss of breath between clenched teeth.

“Listen, it’s police shit and I’m not going to tell you what we saw there,” he pauses for a moment, trying to find a way to explain it to her in a way that wouldn’t piss her off. “Not because I don’t think you can handle it, but because talking about it just...”

Jess doesn’t speak, her feet shuffling off to the opposite side of the kitchen, a protesting squeak from a cabinet hinge followed by the whisper of spray.  _ Well, that fucker is definitely on there now.  _ With the leak more than likely fixed, Jacob remains under the sink for a moment as an avoidance tactic--hoping that Jess would simply let it alone.

“You’re gonna help her though, right? Find Rachel, find whoever killed Lana?” Curiosity mixed with expectation laces her words and it feels like a clever trap. If he committed to it, spoke the words aloud…

He wants to say yes, but what comes out is: “If she’ll let me.”

Before she questions him any further Dutch stomps into the house, rubbing his hands together and muttering profanity. “Chain’s reattached--that rickety chair’s just gonna be kindling. We heard anything yet?”

“If we had do you think we’d still be greasing squeaky hinges and fixing pipes, Uncle Dutch?”

The older man sighs and drops into a chair at the kitchen table, attempting to rub feeling back into his hands. As Jacob pulls himself out from underneath the sink he can feel Dutch’s scrutinizing stare boring holes into his back as he tidies up before getting to his feet.

“Go turn the water back on, Jess.”

Turning on her heel it was probably for the best that they did not hear the muttered complaints, only the sound her booted feet make as she stomps down the stairs to the equally horrifying basement. “IS IT WORKIN’?!”

_ Boom. Boom. _

“What the fuck was that?” Dutch jumps to his feet, knocking the chair over as he follows Jacob to the front door and the porch beyond. Black smoke blooms in the east, and again in the south, and again to the west. Jacob watches, dimly aware that the radio in the kitchen has roared to life.

“Attention Hope County, this is an emergency broadcast. Please stay in your homes and await fur--Gil? What are you...what’s that in your hand? No, no…please.”

“Something’s wrong, guys. Nancy’s in trouble.”

_ I think we all are.  _ Jacob’s jaw ticks, gaze sliding to Dutch.  _ Ellie, where the fuck are you? _

“We need to get to the station.”

 

* * *

 

Joseph does not resist, eyes wide and glassy behind his aviators. Of course they have Ellie do the honors and her skin crawls as though it’s trying to detach itself from the muscle to slink away rather than touch him, even with her gloves on. 

He is serene, back-lit by the glow of fanaticism and the watchful eyes of his...family? John Duncan stares unabashedly, a strange smile skirting the edges of his mouth as he holds a swaying woman by the elbow. Those in attendance voice their protest and she can practically hear their collective grip tightening on whatever weaponry they possessed. Cameron’s hand lingers by his holster and the cut of his eyes is a clear indicator that his discomfort had reached an all-time high.

“God will not let you take me,” murmured in a tone awash with confidence. “He won’t.”

“C’mon now, Mr. Duncan. Nice and easy.” Earl’s voice is nearly lost to the rising din as they lead him out, surrounded by his angry followers who alternate between menacing snarls and plaintive bleats.

_ Where’s Rachel?  _ She wants to spin him around, wants to see him separated from the comfort and worship of the desperate.  _ What did you do to Lana?  _ She wants  _ him  _ to be the one running barefoot through the snow, wants him to feel the fear Lana and Rachel felt. 

They walk, slow and steady toward the cars. Staci deflates ever so slightly, the M4 in his hands readjusted on its strap so that he can get the door as they put a shirtless Joseph within. 

“Marshal, can we get the  _ fuck  _ outta here now?” Joey’s voice is laced with iron, facing the growing crowd with a calm Ellie was sure none of them really felt.

Cameron nods as he quickly circles around the SUV to the passenger side. “We’ll lead this time.”

Joseph is singing under his breath as Ellie slides into the car, heart pounding like a war drum in her ears. She does not so much as wait for Earl to throw his own vehicle into drive before she stomps the accelerator, the rear end fishtailing and showering Joseph’s flock with gravel. 

They hit the snowy road and it’s only a moment before Ellie can see the others in the rearview mirror. Should she not feel more at ease?  _ Dangerdangerdangerdanger.  _ It crawls out of the white noise in the back of her head, sinks its teeth into the meat and marrow of her. 

“Where is Rachel Jessop?” Colored by adrenaline and ill-disguised rage the words are meant to be shot like bullets, but Joseph merely shrugs and continues to sing as Earl radios Nancy back at the station.

“...do you know what your sin is, Marshal?”

Cameron rolls his eyes, the set of his jaw revealing that he’d like to respond, but playing into a disturbed man’s hands was clearly not something he was interested in. Which is fine, considering Joseph answers in short order anyway.

“It’s pride, Marshal. Pride.” Same lofty tone, those odd eyes drilling into the back of  _ her  _ skull.

_ Boom!  _

“What the fuck?!” Cameron points through the glass at a black plume of smoke and Ellie tries to school her facial expressions into something resembling a cool mask.  _ Focus on the task at hand.  _

_ Boom! _

Earl yells something on the radio and Nancy responds, Ellie takes her eyes off the road for a second. 

And that is her first mistake.

A figure materializes from the snow drifts that spin across the road and it takes her a moment to realize that he has a gun in his hands. By the time the thought has fully formed, the first bullet thunks into the hood of the truck, followed by another and another. Seconds, mere seconds, is all it takes for the entire endeavour to go sideways.

One of the bullets hits the windshield, but she’s already jerked the wheel and that is when the tires start to skid. A booming chant of  _ ohfuckohfuckohfuck  _ screams through her head and out of her mouth, one hand shooting out to shove the Marshal back into his seat as the car tilts and the screech of crunching metal and shattering glass fills her ears before Ellie’s vision fades to black.

“I told you...God, wouldn’t let you take me.” Joseph’s voice pierces through the cacophony of gunshots and as her eyes fly open she registers that she’s hanging upside down, blood dripping from some unseen wound and into the snow blowing into the wrecked vehicle. 

Blood blossoms on her tongue, the copper tang snaking between her teeth as they pull back from her lips in a snarl. “ _ Fuck you. _ ” He appears relatively unharmed saved for the fact that he’s crawling through broken glass on his hands and knees to look her in the eyes--it is only moments before his face is but mere inches from her own.  _ Tsk, tsk.  _ He clicks his tongue and she resists the urge to spit, one hand tugging on her seat belt while the other gropes blindly for her service weapon.

“Language, Deputy.” Behind his head, beyond the distracting gleam of his neon yellow aviators she sees the Marshal floating into wakefulness. 

Somewhere in the distance Joey is screaming.

Joseph’s lips are moving, but she blocks out the sound because she is so  _ fucking  _ tired of hearing him talk. Seeing that little self-assured smirk tucked into the corner of his mouth like a secret, she thinks of Lana and of Rachel and all she wants to see is that smile fade. His fingertips graze her cheek and her entire body coils tight, a strangled howl of frustration tearing itself from between her clenched teeth.

But then he’s sliding back out, his booted feet retreating.

“C-Cameron. Cameron we...we have to get out of here.” 

He has a knife in his hands, sawing at the seatbelt in a frenzy as the sound of screeching tires and gunfire grow closer and closer.

The Marshal falls onto the shattered glass below, uttering a curse before he turns to start helping Ellie out of her belt. When the belt’s nearly cut through a jumble of hands ensnare his feet and drag him, his arm caught in Ellie’s in a poor attempt at a bear hug.

“Ellie! Get the fuck off me! Get off me!”

He disappears and the sound of blows landing fill her head and she jerks all the harder against the belt, reaching desperately for her Glock that is  _ just  _ out of reach. A series of gunshots beyond her field of vision resound and the muffled sound of bodies thumping into the snow.  _ No, no, no.  _

Tears creep into her eyes, thrashing harder against her restraint.  _ I’m next. I’m next. Cameron’s dead. Where’s Earl? Joey? Staci?  _ Finally she drops to the ruined roof of the upturned Bronco, ignoring the pain as glass shards burrow into her hands. Blindly reaching for her gun she finds brief respite in the cold snow as she slides out of the car. 

She knows there is a chorus of apocalyptic sound rising around her, men in camouflage with that odd symbol she’d seen on the doors of Joseph’s church painted onto their clothing scattered around the twisted remains of her favorite ride. Neither the Marshal or his body are anywhere to be seen, but she can see Earl and Staci laying down suppressive fire at the approaching members of the cult and scrambles to her feet. 

They’re yelling, but she can’t hear. Her hands shake as she raises her gun, flicking the safety off. When the first bullet explodes from her gun the sound returns to her world, assailing her ear drums with strangled screaming.

“Where’s Joey?!” Calling as she takes cover against a volley of bullets.

“They fucking took her. What about the Marshal?!” Staci barks as he jams another clip into his assault rifle.

“I don’t know!”

Earl looks out of breath, pale as death and oddly small without the presence of his hat. He watches the advancing figures with a grim determination, looking back at his deputies and seeing nothing but young lives about to be terribly wasted.

“Fuck it,” he mutters. “You two get on outta here. I’ll hold ‘em off best I can, but you two have the best chance of getting out and getting help.”

They both stare at him, agape. 

“Earl, no...that’s so fucking stupi--” Ellie starts before he interrupts her.

“Are you disobeying a command?”

Staci snarls, the breath expunged from his lungs curling from around clenched teeth. “Fuck you, Earl. We’re not leaving you to die, dammit.”

“Listen, we got people dependin’ on us. You both took an oath to protect and serve the people of this county and that’s what you’re going to do, understand me? Staci, RUN!”

Earl moves from behind cover and Ellie sees a trail of red running down the back of his jacket and his pant leg. Before she can scream out he’s running toward Joseph’s men, and after that? She loses sight of him.

Making it to Pratt before he lunges after Whitehorse is no small feat, her free hand fisting in the back of his jacket. “STACI! LET’S GO!” 

With one vehicle completely totalled and the other riddled with bullet holes they had no choice, or at least that might be what an outsider looking in on the situation would say. No choice but to scatter and run, it was smarter for the weak and injured to be sacrificed for the good of the rest. Take the emotion and morality out of the question and it leaves you with a simple biological imperative stronger than and yet reinforced by fear: survival.

Fight, flight, or freeze.

Ellie flies, scrambling off the road and pulling herself through the twisted barbs of a ruined fence with Staci not far behind. Hands numb, heart pounding, everything else falls away: Lana, Rachel, Jacob, Earl, Staci, Joey, The Marshal. Instinct demands that she run, that she  _ hide  _ and why does the little girl’s voice sound so familiar? 

Wading through knee-deep snow as fast as her burning legs can carry her, she knows that where she’s going is perhaps the definition of a long shot. A foolhardy attempt that would more than likely end with drowning, but it would be better than whatever awaited them back there. 

The sound of gunfire fading she finally slowed her pace, stumbling and taking a knee she glances over her shoulder, Staci’s name living and dying on her tongue when she realizes that he is not, in fact, behind her anymore.

“Staci?!” Her stomach drops, eyes wide as she scrambles back to her feet. “Pratt?!”

No one answers but the wind, the flurries of white pressing in close and muffling all the ambient noise. Alone, alone, unbearably alone. What is she supposed to do now? Scream for help that won’t come? Her jaw tics, rational thought trying to push away the lesser of its peers.  _ Don’t stop, keep going. Keep fucking going. _

She slogs through the snow toward the lake, the chill settling into her face and hands. Snot and blood dripping down her face that she tries to scrub away with the bloodied arm of her Carhartt when something,  _ someone  _ tackles her to the ground.

“Found you, sinner.”

Foul breath washes over her, legs kicking frantically to try and get away, hand falling to her gun. He grabs her hand, slamming it and the gun against the snow and ice until she releases it--his other hand balled into a fist that connects with her face. The blow to her head leaves her dazed, aware enough to hear the man howling with rage as his fists dig into her.  _ He’s gonna kill you, aren’t you going to do something about that?  _

A hand slips to the pocket of her pants, hoping to feel the metal clip of the knife still there. Her foul-smelling assailant is reaching for her gun when she finds purchase, flips the blade and forces herself up with a wild scream. The blade catches him in the stomach and a grunt of surprise escapes from her would-be killer and after that?

She doesn’t remember much. Just the sound of tearing fabric and the wet sound punctured flesh makes, like rain boots squelching in spring mud.

Only that by the time she’s done there’s so much blood that she cannot discern what’s hers and what isn’t. He isn’t moving anymore, eyes glassy and dull of any light that might have given away that life yet remained. Her hands are slippery, shaking like the rest of her.

How long had she been at this? Too long. Numb, she rocks back on her heels and rises to her feet with a grunt, pain exploding like fireworks from too many places. She hears voices in the distance and a low moan of anxiety slips from her mouth as she staggers yet again toward the lake, leaving the mutilated body behind.

_ Pick up the pace, pick up the pace.  _ She struggles to comply with the orders being barked in her subconscious, it’s so close, so close. The voices are getting closer and closer, an exclamation in the distance leading her to think they’d found their comrade. 

Someone comes up behind her, arm around her middle and a hand around her mouth--dragging her backward into a snow-choked alcove along the shoreline. She struggles, attempting to stab fruitlessly at whoever had grabbed her, vision choked by snow and adrenaline-flushed red. “Shh, Ellie. They’ll hear  you.”

The familiarity of the voice bleeds all of the fight right out of her.

“Eli?”

 

* * *

 

Beyond that narrow scrap of land nestled in the midst of Silver Lake all had fallen to chaos. Shortwave radios had sprung to life as gunfire cut through the sleepy winter landscape as neighbors turned on neighbors, the tunnels leading out had been collapsed--the cell towers had been destroyed. Thick black smoke hung in a nigh impenetrable curtain over Fall’s End and somewhere Tracey Lader is frantically trying to locate her missing friend.

Rachel and Selene are holding hands in a bright white room, listening to the world disintegrate beyond the walls of their prison. Selene, pale as death and mumbling nonsense, tears tracking down her chapped cheeks while Rachel strains to listen for the return of their guard.

“Selene...Selene!” Her voice comes in a harsh whisper, mouth try and tongue heavy in her head. “Selene, listen to me: we’re gonna try something okay?”

Watery eyes shot through with thick red veins and dilated pupils stare back at her, the mumbling ceased. “Are we...are we gonna go home now?”

Rachel’s never been good at soothing other people, but for this girl she tries. Patting her hand in what she hopes is a comforting manner she tucks Selene’s behind her ears and away from her face. “Yeah, yeah we’re going home.”  _ One of us will.  _ She holds the crude shiv in her free hand so hard that she can feel it dig, feel blood well.

_ One of us will. _   
  


* * *

 

 

The argument over who would stay and who would go to the police station had been a snarled, albeit brief affair. In the end Jess won her argument, ducked down and riding shotgun with Jacob sitting in the truck bed with a shotgun across his lap and a pistol sitting heavy in the small of his back.

All the world may have ended for all they know, the winter palette of Hope County distorted with crimson and black char and gun metal from spent bullet casings. Roaring toward the police station with the cold wind whipping at his face he feels...numb to it all. Something is clawing at his rib cage, begging to be set free and the anxiety over the fate of one deputy eat and eat at his self-conscious.

As they draw closer to their intended way-point he bangs on the back window, Dutch pulling at the slot so Jacob can yell above the roaring wind. “We’re gonna have to park somewhere out of sight.”

No answer, just a nod as the late afternoon sun peaks through the grim clouds as if to see what had been wrought upon the land. Curiosity satisfied, the sun disappears again as the truck slides to a stop. Jess moves to pull her door open, but finds it impossible as Jacob glares at her through the glass, shaking his head.

“Stay in the truck, Jess. There’s a Glock in the glove compartment, anybody comes up to the truck…” He trails off, but the meaning is clear and there’s something in his eyes, something she had never seen before that cuts off any bitchy remark that had been about to leave her mouth.

She watches her uncles depart and cannot help the chill that races up and down her spine, hunting animals was one thing, but this? The practiced steps these two men took as one went around the front and the other around the back? The two men that left her in the truck were strangers to her.

 

* * *

 

Dutch goes in the front of the police station, blinking away the snow that had snuck behind his glasses. Adrenaline shot through his old veins and old bones and for a moment he did not feel the arthritis that was sneaking through his body like choking vines. For a moment he was young again, walking toward the maw of uncertainty much as he had many years ago when he jumped out of planes for the red, white, and blue.

Taking a deep breath he opens the door.

Quiet as a tomb save for the sound of Nancy’s terrified sniffling and murmured pleas for mercy. Dutch swallows and walks in slowly with his hands up, following the scuff of footsteps and quiet crying until a man wearing a motel uniform swims into sight, a gun trained to Nancy’s head.

“Don’t come any closer!” He presses the muzzle of the gun harder into the terrified woman’s head, sweating like a pig.  _ Jumpy little fucker. _

“Listen, uh,” Dutch squints at the name tag still attached to the man’s shirt. “Gil, right? What’s going on, son? Do you need help?”

He sees the shadow creeping, close to the floor.  _ Just get him talking, keep him talking. _

“No! I...the Father said we needed to be ready, they trusted me to...we must purge the land, cull the unworthy.” Gil is babbling, arm vibrating. Something had stopped him from completing his task, some doubt yet lingered in this kid’s head.

“You’re doing a good job, I’m sure they would proud of you, but...can’t you let her go? Nancy has a little boy at home waiting for her.” His hands remain raised, voice calm as he watches Jacob edge closer still.

Gil swallows, the uncertainty finally apparent in his glassy eyes. “But they told me…”

He doesn’t finish the sentence, Nancy must have seen Jacob and a chirping whistle radiates from where he ought to be, milliseconds after that Nancy forces herself down and Gil? Gil’s head snaps toward the sound just as a bullet thunks into his skull. Jacob stands as Dutch goes to Nancy sobbing on the floor, but there’s a flash of void stuck in Jacob’s blue eyes that Dutch hadn’t seen in years.

_ Bang!  _ Another round destroys the young man’s face as Jess skids in, pistol in hand. Her eyes fall to the body first and Nancy second, trying to school her expression.

“Um...uh...I just...Wheaty just rolled in with that Marshal on the back of his four-wheeler. He’s in pretty bad shape.”

“N-No one else?” Nancy gasps, holding onto Dutch’s forearm as they both stand.

“No, nobody else is with ‘em.” Jess looks away, discomfited by the fresh wave of tears streaking down Nancy’s face. Shoving the pistol into the waistband of her jeans and muttering something about her bow she moves out of the room to help Wheaty haul the half-conscious Marshal inside.

Once they get him onto the nearest desk (Joey’s) they take a moment to convene.

“Where are the rest of them?”

“Listen, Mr. Seed...I uh...Eli and I were out there because Mr. Duncan said he felt like there might be a fault in one of the other bunkers that wasn’t on the compound. When we heard the gunshots we...well, Eli told me to go after the Marshal here and bring ‘im back right away. Eli was going to see about helping Staci, Earl, and Ellie.”

A pinprick of relief, but only for a moment.

“What about Joey?” Nancy murmurs, fishing a first-aid kit out of her desk to see about patching up the Marshal.

“We saw ‘em take her. Eli said he’d radio in once they were safe. I gotta tell you though, I wouldn’t go charging in there right now. We’ve got enough to deal with out there without worrying about the Duncan’s island.”

Jacob ignores Wheaty, goes to check the radio to ensure it’s still functioning. “Which frequency is he gonna be on, Wheaty?”

Nancy’s fiddling with the latches on the first-aid kit when Cameron Burke seizes Jacob’s right arm, his free hand grabbing for a gun that wasn’t there.

“ _ You,”  _ he snarls, flecks of spittle flying from his mouth. “You fucking helped them, didn’t you? Didn’t you?!”

Jacob forgets for a moment that Cameron looks like wet hamburger and slams him down on the table. “The hell are you talking about? Help who?”

“Your fucking brothers. Your brothers.”

Deafening silence.

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

Cameron’s hysterical laughter overtakes the station.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♫ Death Don't Have No Mercy by Delaney Davidson, Marlon Williams


	13. the coldest hasn't thawed (yet)

Jacob stares at the files on Whitehorse’s desk, scarred hands braced on its edge as his mind trips over the details each dossier grants him. His stomach churns as calloused fingertips edge over mugshots, surveillance, and crime scene photos. Cold dread sluices down his spine as he tries to refute Cameron’s delirious claims, but the eyes in these photographs are known to him. He would recognize them anywhere, even if he didn’t recognize the faces they belonged to.

It was as though he’d been forcibly thrown back in time; to the kudzu that twined sinuously over trees and street lights -- to the pollen that dusted everything yellow in spring. To the churches and their oddly sinister steeples, to the peach trees that always bore a sickly sweet stench: flowers and rotting meat.

Rome, Georgia. _Not_ home, just a place to be born where the air conditioner was always broken and Daddy liked to give sermons with a belt or a fist. Where the only Holy Ghost you’d ever seen was your mother in a threadbare nightgown with her hand on the front door knob. _Open it and you’ll be free._

After that, after _them,_ it was the farm and the fire, flames licking up his arms. Unapologetic as he watched it burn, even as the flesh on his arms crisped and nerve endings seared.

_How the fuck did I miss this?_

Some cruel twist of fate, his own unwillingness to come down from the seclusion of the mountains where life was simple, brutal, and quiet. Glancing up from the manila envelopes he sees the sun has started to dip and long shadows are cast in the quiet of the police station. Entombed in Fall’s End with the end of the world he’d built for himself tumbling down before his eyes like so many cheap bricks.

The door opens and Jacob glances sideways, to Cameron panting against the door jamb.

“This...Joab. He’s not one of us.” His finger jabs at the file he had separated from John and Joseph’s, the word _us_ sour on his tongue. That was certainly not going to do anything to dispel the Marshal’s suspicions.

Cameron grunts, pushing Nancy’s worrying hands away as he watches the scarred redhead with contempt curling his lip. “You really telling me that you didn’t know?”

“I’m telling you I didn’t know. If I had…” The sentence hangs, incomplete. What would he have done? Stopped it? Would he have joined forces if only to protect them from themselves or from the world as he had done when he was younger and stronger?

Cameron opens his mouth, no doubt to sling another suspicious barb, but he’s cut off by Jess and Wheaty pushing past him. “Unc, there’s still no word from Eli or Ellie. Wheaty’s worried about his brother, but he’s safer with us, right?”

The cut of her eyes tells him he is supposed to agree and he finds himself suddenly wondering why the hell they are looking to him as though he’s the one in charge. As though they still trust him.

“Everyone has family out there,” he starts, ignoring Cameron’s scoff. “We can’t stay here, Fall’s End isn’t easily defendable and they will come again. Winter or not. Shouldn’t move 'til morning.”

“D’you think Ellie will be back by then?” Wheaty flips a braid over his shoulder, face earnest and hopeful. “I mean, they should both be back then, right?”

 _Ellie._ He had been trapped in how the past had fed into this future that the second mention of her name inspires a specter in the corner of the room. Miller stands next to the ghost he’d conjured, a hand sliding up her shoulder toward her throat.

“I don’t know, but Fall’s End should be evacuated. The old prison...that is a place that could be fortified.”

Cameron arches a brow, an appraising look that only twists the dagger deeper into Jacob’s guts.

_Did I pick a side that pits me against my own blood? Is there even time to stop this?_

 

* * *

 

The smoke and blood eventually fall to the darkness, the gunshots and explosions silenced. Hope County is a valley entombed, the blanket of stars overhead cloud-swept as the temperatures drop to frost the trees and window panes of the structures that had survived the initial assault. Back at the compound, the lights are on and the generators are running, casting a deceptively warm glow that seems...incongruous with the jagged shadows the barbed wire creates.

Rachel focuses on their silhouette, willing the unshed tears to dry before they betray her. Before Joseph or John see and draw some conclusion that aligns with their preconceptions. _Soften your eyes, unclench your fists, it’s easier if you just let it happen._ She bows her head and attempts to appear contrite as the heavy sound of booted feet thud across the planks of Joseph’s chapel and come to stop in front of her.

She doesn’t look up.

“Joseph, she killed Thomas and let that girl escape and you’re just letting her roam free?”

This one is Joab or so she understands, a great bear of a man that seems military in bearing -- spine straightened by drill instructors to better carry the weight of command. He seems so much angrier than the others, harbors more suspicion even towards his own people and he certainly did not like her. She did not need to look up to see the disdain that had seeped from eyes to mouth to words as he regarded her, a small thing on a rough-hewn pew.

A hand descends to her shoulder and she fights the urge to stiffen, to swat away the unwelcome contact as her skin crawls in protest. Yes, she had helped Selena get away. Yes, she had slit that boy’s throat, an act she had never thought herself capable of. His blood was still embedded under her fingernails, lined the creases in her palms no matter how hard she scrubbed.

 _Murderer,_ her mind accuses. Even as it conjures a flicker of lucidity in Selena’s eyes when she murmurs a ‘thank you’ and presses a kiss to Rachel’s temple before flying into the dark, a pale moth fleeing the flame. _Murderer._

She lifts her head finally, meeting Joseph’s searching gaze.

“She was not strong enough,” she murmurs, “but I am.”

And that seems to placate him because his gaze leaves her to focus intently on Joab as he stands at the foot of the altar with his arms crossed.

“Joab, I understand your concerns, and I do not fault or slight you, brother,” Joseph speaks to him as though he is attempting to calm a spooked horse. Walking toward him slowly with a beatific smile carved upon his mouth.

“You don’t fault or slight, but you don’t listen either,” Joab retorted. “I’m telling you, we cannot trust her.”

John yawns loudly from where he is slumped in the pew behind her and she notices the sharp glance Joseph shoots in his direction. The youngest brother, Rachel had gleaned as much from Selena’s ravings.

_“‘He’ll pull off your wings, he’ll cut you to see what sins you bleed.’”_

“I can earn it,” she said, squaring her shoulders. “Let me earn it.”

She can feel John’s eyes drilling into the back of her head with interest now, but she maintains eye contact with the two men before her. _Survivor. I’m a fucking survivor and I will survive this, too. Survive them._

With Hope County presumably thrown to chaos and the echoing chatter of an unsuccessful arrest by the sheriff’s department, she had come to one frightening conclusion: she would have to find a way to save herself.

Joab seems nonplussed by her plea, but he inclines his head ever so slightly to Joseph. She will have to be very careful around all of them, this much she knows, but him especially.

“Well, _Faith_ we have someone we would like you to meet.” John rises from his seat, beckoning to some figure that had been waiting just outside the chapel doors.

A man enters, light reflecting from his glasses. Shadows catch in hollowed out cheeks, more scarecrow than human and emotionless save for the fervent gleam she sees in his eyes. 

John’s hand is on her elbow then, pulling her to her feet and ushering her toward him. “We understand that for all your...late assignments you are something of a wunderkind in biochemistry and botany. Runs in the blood, hm?”

_How long have you been watching me?_

“This is Peter, I think you two could learn from one another.”

Peter does not offer her a hand to shake, watery grey eyes assessing her as one might a cow at an auction. He tilts his head, smoothing his shirt.

“Shall we?”

 

* * *

 

They had waited for nightfall, Eli turning his back while Ellie tried to stay her convulsing muscles long enough to relieve herself. The warm blood of the man she’d killed had long congealed, frozen on her jacket and jeans and hair. She must have looked like anything but an officer of the law, but she saw no judgment in Eli’s gaze when he turned back, only a steely resolve.

“It’s time to move.”

“Where?” She asked, trying to keep her teeth from chattering as she zips her fly with trembling fingers. “We can’t go up the shoreline without passing Joseph’s place and they’ll definitely see us. Crossing there would definitely get us spotted.”

Eli’s shoulders hitch in a shrug, icicles falling from his beard as he tugs a hand through it. “It has to be a halfway point for both of us.”

“Dutch’s.”

“You think he’s still there?” It wasn’t a half-bad idea, the crossing would not be nearly as long and Dutch’s bunker definitely had supplies.

“Even if he isn’t I know how to get in.”

“I’ll go first.”

They stagger across the snow and ice, listening desperately for a telltale crack that would spell out a watery grave, but the ice was thick. The winter had given them that small boon and although she had been exhausted for hours now, she forced herself to continue putting one foot in front of the other as the wind howled across the expanse of the lake.

“This is my fault,” Eli gasps beside her as they make out the silhouette of the island against shafts of moonlight. “I can’t fucking believe I didn’t...figure it out sooner.”

Ellie huffs in quiet laughter, watching her breath spool in steam above her head. “Don’t be a fucking idiot, I feel like all of this is...all of us are complicit.”

 _Whitehorse, Staci, Joey._ Their names play on repeat in her head and even the Marshal catches on the fringes. Whatever cruel fate the Project at Eden’s Gate had in store for them she would see it undone, there had to be a way through this -- even in the dead of winter.

When they finally made it to the craggy shore of Dutch’s Island she nearly kissed the frozen stones that lined the rocky shore, taking Eli’s cold hand in hers and dragging him up the hills and through the trees.

“He’ll have seen us on his cameras if he’s here,” Eli ventured in a somewhat hopeful tone that Ellie ignores as she feels for the false brush he covers his bunker door with. Finally finding purchase she tugs sharply and there it is: a metal door she never thought she would be so happy to see.

Her fingers shake as they touch the keypad, warm air rushing to engulf them as the door whines open. “Hurry, get inside.”

They stumble down the metal steps, hear the hum of electricity, but Dutch isn’t there to greet them. As the metal door clanks shut it’s just them and the warmth of a home temporarily abandoned only to be temporarily occupied again.

“I told Wheaty to get the Marshal to safety, he’ll be checking our frequency. I should…” Eli is watching her, watery eyes staring at her hands.

Ellie looks up quickly, clearing her throat and nodding. “Yeah, uh...you should. I’m going to...I’ll be right back.”

She nearly runs down the corridor to extend the space between them, disappearing into a room at the end of the hallway and shutting the door only to sink down on the other side of it.

“Wheaty, come back?”

He sits in the dark, face illuminated by the flickering televisions and the blinking light on Dutch’s phone that hints to voicemails.

“Wheaty, are you there?”

_C’mon kid, tell me they didn’t get you too._

“Eli?” Dutch’s voice breaks through the crackling radio waves.

“Dutch are you with Wheaty? We’re at your place, where the fuck are you?” He forsakes radio decorum, too exhausted to care.

“Wheaty’s here, he’s sleeping. We all happened to convene at the police station - Jess, Nancy, Jacob, me. He brought the Marshal in and he’s still breathin’ believe it or not.” The older man takes a beat, sucks in a breath. “I take it you’re with the Deputy?”

Eli swallows, the apprehension bleeding out of his shoulders in stunted increments. “Yeah, she said she could get in. We crossed the lake to get here. I can’t...I can’t stay with her, Dutch. I gotta get cleaned up and head toward Neil’s place, Jeannie and Cole were supposed to be there.”

“Understood. She’s...she’s not in the room with you is she?” Dutch’s voice is dropping lower and lower as if he’s trying to make sure someone in his company doesn’t hear.

“No, she’s...I think she’s trying to clean up.”

“She doing okay? Wheaty said they had Joey, they must have Pratt and Earl too.” Dutch says their names in such a way that it conjures images of anchors sinking to the bottom of a lake as if he was sure he already knew their fate.

Eli does not answer for a long moment, recalling her wild eyes and hands wet with a man’s blood. She had watched Joseph’s men disassemble her co-workers and drag them away, survived a car wreck, survived, survived.

“She’s...managing,” he says quietly, knowing that Dutch would understand. “It’s been a fucking day.”

“Have her hail us when she’s ready, Jacob needs to talk to her.”

“Will do. Stay safe, brother. Over and out.”

 

* * *

 

She scrubs herself raw in the shower, hot water scalding her skin red. She watches the pink-tinged liquid circle the drain, once a dusty red. Someone else’s blood. Her blood. Her entire body stings and screams, muscles demanding rest that her mind cannot give them as she rings out her hair.

Fingertips ghost over the bruises around her neck, short fingernails digging out pieces of glass from her scalp and her face. When she stands before the mirror in nothing but a towel she inventories the damage, notes how hollow her face had become in the span of a day. _You look like a fucking corpse._

“But I’m not,” she mutters. “I’m not.”

Eli has his turn, grateful that frostbite had not claimed anything important after all. When he exits he catches a glimpse of Ellie’s midsection before the t-shirt falls to her hips, notes the scars but shifts his gaze away in the nick of time.

“I can’t stay with you, Deputy.”

She turns to look at him, subdued by exhaustion or the shitty lighting he could not tell. “Your family.”

Blinking in surprise he cocks his head, drops of water hitting the wall. “Jake told you about them?”

She nods, pulling her damp hair away from her face. “I wouldn’t keep you from them, it was...stupidly brave of you and Wheaty to do what you did today. I owe you, but you shouldn’t put yourself at risk like that again.”

The words as they leave her mouth are devoid of the warmth of expression -- Eli didn’t know her well at all save for gleanings from the ever tight-lipped Jacob Seed, but he knew that if Jacob Seed was ice she had to be fire.

“It’s because of them that I do anything, don’t worry about me. We’re going to regroup and figure out how to fix this. I got ahold of Dutch while you were getting cleaned up. Wheaty made it to the station with the Marshal. Jess, Jacob, and Nancy are there too.”

Her eyes spark to life at the news, glinting with unshed tears.

“Dutch said Jacob needed to talk to you before you turn in.”

She sees him out with supplies and a gun taken from Dutch’s locker, warm against the winter chill. He turns to watch as the doors close and his mind catches on how small she looks, a guttering flame at the bottom of a dark hole.

“Be careful, Dep,” he calls down to her and she gives him a two-fingered salute before the doors close.

 

* * *

 

“Paging President Roosevelt and his merry band of miscreants, this is Foxfire. Over.”

“Hey kid, heard you had a hot date with a married man.” Dutch does nothing to disguise the warm relief in his voice, leaning back in the swivel chair he’d claimed for his own. “He gone?”

“Yeah, he had to get back. Sent him with some firepower, didn’t look like a gun you favored anyway. Hope you aren’t pissed.” Her voice sounds small, exhausted.

Dutch’s eyes slide to where Jacob sits in Whitehorse’s office and though all the lights are out, he knows Jacob is yet awake. Processing.

“Are you guys okay?” Ellie presses into the silence, trying to get a bead on what had transpired in the world outside the hell she had clawed her way out of.

“Yeah, we’re okay. We left for the station as soon as the bombs started going off. Jacob saved Nancy’s life, Nancy’s been keeping an eye on the Marshal.” It’s an abridged version, one that he will let Jacob share because Dutch knows this isn’t his story - it’s theirs. He’s merely supporting cast, the narrator or the invisible hand meant to gently prod.

He listens to her exhale shakily, knowing that she knows. They allow each other enough space for not-quite-lies as necessary and share a mutual appreciation for the softening of blows.

“He doesn’t want to talk to anyone right now, does he?”

 _Does she know about that, too?_ Electric worry skitters through him like mice running from a sprung trap. There was no way Eli could know about that too.

“Not exactly, but you know him.”

A soft laugh on the other end.

“Go get him.”

“All right, gimme a second.” Dutch rises, ignoring the flare of pain in his back as he steps quietly around and over sleeping bodies. The dead one had been tossed out the back into the carport.

He opens the door and sure enough, Jacob’s eyes are open and staring at the wall. “I got Ellie on the radio, Eli dropped her at my place.”

Silence.

“Jacob, she needs to talk to you. She asked for you specifically.” Dutch glares through the shadow, wiry arms crossing over his chest to carry out his manipulation without showing his hand. Jacob knew his tells after years of literal and metaphorical poker games.

 

When Jacob rises to exit Dutch claims the worn leather chair, booted feet resting on the top of Earl’s desk. _Whitehorse wouldn’t mind._

 

* * *

 

He sinks down into the chair, staring at the headset before finally grabbing it. He had nothing to say, what could he say? What the hell was he going to tell her? What was th--

“You there, Mountain Man?”

Her voice. Even fraught with tension there was something in its tone that unspooled whatever poisonous thread had curled up inside him, a relief after so many, _so many hours_  of fucking torment. The known and the unknown sewn together in a scene made to mock, to brutalize, to haunt the nightmares that would come if he allowed sleep to claim him at last.

He swallows past the lump in his throat. “I’m here.”

“Today...was one of the worst days of my fucking life.” She sighs it into the mic, and he imagines her in Dutch’s darkened bunker, spinning from side to side in her chair. She’s smoking something, he knows that much. Can hear it in the muted choke of her words, in the long exhale that sounds like she’s trying to hold back a deluge.

 _Mine wasn’t so great either._ He does not compare war stories, can only imagine what hers looks like. The imagining makes it worse. _You should have let me come with you._ Oh, he wants to say it, to ignite some spark that would dissolve this into a fight just so he doesn’t have to picture her sitting in the dark with tears running down her face.

“Tell me.”

She does.

It is both better and worse than whatever scenes his twisted mind’s eye had conjured. Ellie lets the words flow out and Jacob pitches a glance behind him, but everyone seems to have remained asleep.

When she falls quiet he leans forward, elbows resting on the desk. It’s easy to conjure her dark outline sitting across from him, he can feel her through the miles of violent darkness.

“So was it luck or was it you?” Recalling the last time they’d had a similar conversation. He lobs it like a Molotov, waits for the shatter and burn.

“It was me, but I fucking wish it wasn’t.”

“You aren’t him, Ellie.” Quiet, soothing. The same tone he had taken with Friday when he had first found her, a shivering ball of fur and teeth.

“I was him, I could feel him _._ ” She spirals and he has to do something to reel her in.

“We’re going to head for the old prison tomorrow, Fall’s End won’t be safe for long. I have something to tell you, too.”

“So tell me,” she challenges, temporarily distracted. He can practically feel her elbow jabbing into his ribs.

He shakes his head, a hand running over his face. “When I see you,” he promises. “I’ll tell you when I see you.”

“ _Fuck,_ you better pray the streets are empty for me then. Dutch has walkies here, I’ll snag one and I’ll find you.”

 _You better._ “Ellie?”

He can see her, rolling her shoulders pacing to and fro. Guilt and nervous energy gnawing at her insides like a cancer. “Yeah?”

“I fixed your sink for you.”

She laughs, tens of thousands of tiny sparks, the embers burn him, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

"See you soon."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♫ The Sweets by The Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs
> 
> Sorry for the long wait, lots of moving and gutting going on at my house at the moment. I re-wrote this bastard chapter three times and I'm still not sure I'm satisfied with it. I have also been studying the game map to a degree my fiance finds hilarious, but the details are important to me, as is the vulnerability between all these characters. A shout out to my friends and fellow writers, Vega and Dolphinitly. 
> 
> Oh, and just in case: Peter was mentioned as being credited along with Rachel for the perfected version of the Bliss. Neil was an actual character you never got to meet in the game, his place is past the Oberlin Picnic Area and is referred to as the Red Tail Cabin. It's moderately close to Whitetail HQ in the game.


End file.
